Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management, Delhi
Online published on 2 March, 2012.
Inclusiveness dictated social systems in India are almost synchronized with India's other governance systems. India has rule of law flawed by practice of flagrant violations. Vital public goods like arresting criminalization of society is vitiated by tolerating fraud and corruption by all concerned almost as an inevitable. There are seven technological interventions to minimize MGNREGA frauds, three of them are of nature of detection, one is investigative and three of them are of nature of systemic prevention. Detection systems include voice-stress-analysis, red-flagging and predictive-modeling. Investigative system is data-base-searching. Prevention systems include exception-reporting, OLAP and link-analysis. IT enabled systems can address issues tike employment generated and demand for work limit the program and create geographical disparities; in the process of being a universal programme attempting for effective inclusion, the act has inherent constraints of rule based exclusions; permissible work in the act creates serious limitations in development impact; and households need be taken as unit of planning. Indian MGNREGA has a synergistic advantage with IT but with caution IT system providers should not become the proverbial white elephants for this nationally critical program and prove cure can often be more dangerous than the disease. Non-exploitative use of IT fire power with socially charged MGNREGA will be great winning combination for India.
