I support MNREGA, its only failure is the payment timeline: Varun Gandhi

Calling the much-debated rural employment scheme of the UPA era, MNREGA, a good scheme, BJP MP Varun Gandhi on Friday said he supports it. Gandhi was in Ahmedabad to launch his book 'A Rural Manifesto: Realising India's Future Through her Villages' at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A).

Addressing the students of public policy, Gandhi said, "I support MNREGA as it has led to some good work especially in Rajasthan. But its failure is the payment timeline."

Lauding other government schemes like Ujjwala, he said, "All these schemes are good but they need to be decentralised."

The book that goes back into the historical incidents of farmers movements, including that led by Mahatma Gandhi in Champaran, Bihar, explores what it means to be a marginal farmer in present days while providing solutions to improving the economic viability of marginal farming.

On farmer crisis, he said, "In 2009, I decided I would give my MP's salary to the family where a suicide happened. This went on for three years. But that had a limited scope, only few benefited in Sultanpur and surrounding districts. Thereafter, I worked with district administration, identified all farmers in debt who could potentially commit suicide and worked out a plan for 26 districts. "For example, we asked farmers to grow pulses instead of paddy which needed water and crowd-funded Rs 30 crore in 2015-16 for them".

On farmers burning stubble contributing to pollution and air quality in Delhi, he argued the cost of stubble processing is Rs 6,000 whereas penalty of burning is about Rs 2,500 per acre making economic sense.

As part of the book launch, Gandhi would be going across the country with 14 lectures, the first being at IIMA, second IIT Mumbai and third at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

He gave succinct examples from his experiences, both urban and rural, to highlight the inequalities prevalent in Indian society currently. Discussing how 'privilege perpetuates privilege', he said, "In an RTI reply, I found that 69% of all serving IAS officers have been to a private school. 84% fo all the serving IAS have grown up in 25 bigger cities and 70% have postgraduate degrees. Having a post-graduation is a luxury in India. In 2015-16, of the number of students who made to IITs, only 8% studied in state board schools.

He further went on saying that an average fees of a private school in Himachal Pradesh are Rs 48000 excluding uniforms. Last year, 12 lakh people took IIT exam of which only 11000 got through. I interviewed 30 families whose children did not make it to IITs and they said they had spent nearly 3 lakhs on tuitions. Time has come that we need to look at non-formal education", he said.

Calling for a national employment policy, he said, "As against 57000 patents filed by Americans, Indians file 1400 patents a year. The average time to get a patent in America is 6-7 months whereas in India, it is 5-6 years. By investing a lakh in textiles, we can create 24 jobs but by investing 24 lakhs in steel, we can only create one job. We need to choose a path of creating jobs. Long ago, 40% of India's GDP was textiles which now is only 2%."

He spoke in detail about possible political reforms that would help strengthen India's democratic governance, such as the parliamentary address of public petitions, need for addressing electoral corruption and strengthening the parliamentary discussion process on passing laws. He said, "51% of all the laws passed in 15 years in parliament are without any debate whereas 61% of bills are not sent to the standing committee. If parliament is not for deliberation what is it for."