The Parliament will soon enact a National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (nrega). Efforts of the national advisory committee on nrega, the left parties and other well-meaning people have borne fruit. The precise shape of the act is still unclear. But the current state of the debate on the scheme foretells an ominous possibility: the act threatens to become a refurbished version of the food for work scheme (ffw). Our policy-makers seem to have forgotten that the rural voter in Andhra Pradesh rejected Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam government even though it unleashed massive ffws on them for three years. They had good reason: the schemes could not address starvation deaths and farmer suicides.

But why do schemes such as the ffw fail? Simply because they do not consider the practical issues at hand. The foodgrains the schemes provide in lieu of labour are meant to alleviate hunger and reduce malnutrition