Sonia Gandhi is on a writing spree. She wrote a letter to the Prime Minister giving five suggestions on how to manage the COVID crisis. These suggestions were generic, naive and reeked of incompetent thought process (For example, her first thought was to ban advertisements in the media!).

On June 8, 2020 she wrote an article in The Indian Express. The muted response that this article received isn’t surprising at all given how bereft of any meaningful content it was. Her article was titled “use MNREGA to help the people of India”. It stuck to me as odd given how MNREGA is already being used to help the people of India, whoever is eligible! So, I started reading the article to understand what are the specifics she is suggesting that will “help the people of India” beyond what MNREGA is already doing.

Somewhere after the rhetoric of how great the idea of MNREGA is, she tells us that “Millions have been saved from hunger and worse in the 15 years since its inception (2005)”. 6 out of these 15 years are under the Modi government, so is she already accepting that the MNREGA was successfully used by the Modi government in his 6 years at the helm? If she is indeed happy, then what is the point of writing an article advising “use MNREGA to help the people of India” when it is already being done!

Her point is that the Prime Minister is diluting this program by, hold your breath, “by integrating it with the prime minister’s pet programs like Swachh Bharat and Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana”. MNREGA is an employment guarantee program. Awas Yojana is a house construction program. Both are government programs. If employment is being provided so that houses can be constructed, how exactly is that a bad thing? How exactly does that amount to diluting the program? If employment is being provided to keep the country clean (Swachh Bharat), then how does that amount to any deception? Isn’t it really efficient if MNREGA is used to speed up the various infrastructure projects of the country? It still beats me how a person who ruled the country for 10 full years thinks providing employment to finish infrastructure projects amounts to “diluting the program”!

She then tells us that “Faced with unprecedented hardship and an economy already in slowdown…”, the government has given a “belated increase in the overall allocation of the program to more than Rs 1 lakh crore”. Am again back to scratching my head to understand what exactly is the problem? A whopping 1 lakh crore that has been allotted to the program (Sonia Gandhi allotted ~40,000 crores in her last year of power) so what exactly is she trying to convey in her article?

Surely, there must be some concrete suggestion somewhere in the article by now right? After spending ~750 words telling us how the Modi government actually did a good job with MNREGA, Sonia Gandhi tells us that “One immediate step must be to issue them job cards in the program.” Oh sure, let’s introduce one more card for our bureaucracy to have fun with! Jokes aside, do you see the quality of this suggestion amidst this unprecedented situation that we are seeing today?

No article by anyone from the Congress party is complete without any reference to Rajiv Gandhi. Sonia Gandhi again shows the way by telling us that “The panchayats, empowered by Rajiv Gandhi’s path-breaking initiatives, must be brought centre-stage as the MGNREGA is not a centralized program.” Ah, so the issue is that the funds are distributed at a district level than at a panchayat level. Come to think of it, wouldn’t this ensure a more equitable distribution of works and infrastructure rather than an unequal model across Panchayats?  

Amidst this unprecedented crisis, the Modi government has so far transferred more than INR 50,000 crores to the bank accounts of the people of India. With this background, what else does Sonia Gandhi have to suggest? “The government must put money directly in the hands of the people … and being flexible about modes of payment to the workers to cut delays” Ah, the meat of the suggestion is to be “flexible about modes of payment”. What exactly does she mean by this? Is she advocating cash payments directly? If so, does she want to re-open the path-breaking “85 paise – 15 paise” model of Rajiv Gandhi? What more flexibility is possible outside of depositing money directly into their bank accounts? Instead of being more specific, all Sonia Gandhi does is give peripheral ideas which have no meaning at all!

Her ending paragraph starts with the following line - “The Modi government has grudgingly come around to the significance of the program.” After reading the whole article, it looks like Sonia Gandhi is grudgingly accepting that the Modi government is doing a fantastic job with handling MNREGA program. Indian Express might have as well changed their headline accordingly..