Unsung architect of MGNREGA dies at 74
NEW DELHI: Whenever former Union minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh stopped his car to chat with journalists on his way out of Parliament, it would be an anxious moment for his officials. India’s most influential rural development minister would not belt out any state secret. But his marathon encounters with journalists would inevitably lead to delays in important meetings. And at least on three occasions, he missed his flight to Patna.
Raghuvansh babu, as he was known, loved to talk. But he worked more.
Singh was the unsung architect of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).
While Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) drafted the rural job guarantee scheme, Singh gave a critical push at a time when it was facing a delay because at least three Congress heavyweights saw the programme as a leaky cauldron of public funds. One afternoon, as United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Gandhi was passing through the Central
Hall of Parliament, a desperate Singh walked up to her and briefed her about the delay.
Within a few minutes, she summoned then defence minister, Pranab Mukherjee, who headed the Group of Ministers on MGNREGA, and told him to expedite the project. The files started moving and India’s first job guarantee scheme was rolled out in 200 districts in February 2006.
Singh, a low-key politician who carved a niche in Bihar as well as national politics, once shot off a letter to then PM Manmohan Singh, accusing a top cabinet minister of being “garib virodhi” (anti-poor).
Then Planning Commission chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia tried to mediate. He met Singh to tell him the senior minister was pained about his letter and that he would want to accompany him to some villages to oversee progress in rural programmes.
“No,” Singh replied, “he should come with me in the peak of summer in north Bihar and stay in an unelectrified village for at least three nights. Only then he would understand what it means to live in an Indian village.”
At a cabinet meeting, Singh verbally made complex calculations for fund requirements for the rural job scheme, leaving colleagues gobsmacked. A minister, unaware that Singh held a doctorate in mathematics and taught the subject before joining politics, asked him, “When did you learn such good math?”
Singh quipped, “I learnt it before you were born!”
Raghuvansh babu was also instrumental in launching the pension scheme for the disabled and widows, and expanded the National Social Assistance Programme (rechristened as Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme) of 1985 to include all individuals below poverty line for the old age pension.
A five-term parliamentarian from Bihar’s Vaishali, he hailed from the dominant Rajput community but worked for the welfare of the poor. He was a loyal lieutenant of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad since the late 1980s till he resigned from the party on September 11.
He entered the Bihar assembly in 1977 and rose through the ranks as a minister and the deputy speaker before winning Vaishali in the 1996 Lok Sabha elections. Between 1996 and 1998, he was the Union minister of state (independent charge), animal husbandry and dairying, and food and consumer affairs.
Singh was perhaps the only leader who could openly criticise Prasad and get away. Once he was asked in an interview how he would rate Prasad’s achievements. Singh replied that in political management, his boss would score a perfect 10 out of 10 but as an administrator, he deserved nothing more than a zero.
Singh’s baiters within the RJD brought the paper clippings to Prasad, demanding action. The RJD chief, however, disappointed them. “Yes, he should not have said such a thing publicly, but whatever he has said is also not incorrect,” Prasad said.