Letters: Restore social schemes

With reference to the piece, "Government should make MGNREGA irrelevant" (February 5), the Congress while in power at the Centre, conceived rural welfare schemes and also devised a digital platform for transaction of assistance. It is a pity that political ineptness robbed the party credit on both counts.

However, prolonged economic stasis in the country and around the world has pushed the 20-month-old Bharatiya Janata Party-led government into shedding its disdain for such social schemes to such an extent that it is now singing praises of those schemes.

It is the duty of the party in power to protect pro-poor initiatives such as the MGNREGA. Such initiatives have led to higher wages for people in rural areas and these have risen faster against inflation since 2007-08. Insurance schemes that pave the path for optimising agricultural productivity, nodal processing systems and marketing, would in time ameliorate the distress of marginalised farmers.

R Narayanan, Ghaziabad

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