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| By Santosh H K Narayan |
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Thursday, September 04, 2008 (20:33:05) |
| Tags : NREGA, Media, Jean Dreze, Rural Employment, Montek Singh |
Corporate media making propaganda against NREGP: Jean Dreze |
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New Delhi: Terming it as an effort to dilute the effectiveness of pro-poor plans like National Rural Employment Guaranty Programme (NREGP), noted economist and one of the major forces behind shaping the programme Jean Dreze has criticised the media for propagating falsehood against it. He expressed his dissatisfaction over media reports suggesting that deputy chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia had termed NREGP a failure in over half of the country. While talking to Headlines India, Dreze, who is also a member of the committee formulated to assess NREGEP, said that media should refrain from just making sensational headlines.
"To me the real interest of this story is what it says about the propagandistic nature of media reports in the corporate-sponsored media. This one evidently includes a good dose of spin, the sensational headline which doesn't correspond to the content - a routine technique," Dreze told Headlines India.
Ahluwalia had said that the NREGP was not doing well in some quarters of the country. However he had expressed his satisfaction over its functioning "in totality". He also pointed out that NREGP in the current year was expected to generate "three times more employment" than what it had generated the year before the UPA came to power.
Dreze also lamented the efforts to reciprocate between expenditure made under NREGP and its reported effects on inflation. "All these reports are motivated and not worth the paper they are printed on. So much so that Montek himself felt the need to clarify that NREGP is, in fact, a success," he said.
The programme has been in news off late due to some adverse comments made by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India about the leakages at various levels. Killings of some social auditors in Jharkhand for raising objections on the irregularities in the implementation of the NREGP have also posed serious concerns over it. Nevertheless, the government is painting it in the colour of success and hoping to gain in the election year. |
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