Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh proved his nickname ‘super CM’ nearly justified when he rapped Chief Minister Hemant Soren first for not coming in time and later went ahead putting onus on the poor Governance for making schemes like MGNREGA and others falter in the State. However, when his turn arrived, the CM also questioned the Minister going gaga on the rural job scheme.
Both the bigwigs came face to face on Friday in a programme on convergence of schemes under MGNREGA, National Rural livelihood Mission and Catalytic Development Programme (CDP) when Ramesh pulled up the CM for arriving about 50 minutes late than the scheduled start.
“When the CM arrived I saw his watch is stuck at 1.30! I drew his attention to it and he said that he has worn this watch after long and thus it got stopped. Mr CM, please have a habit to wear watch and start wearing it from today,” said Ramesh at the beginning of his address. Similar was the case when Ramesh had arrived in time at lali panchayat of Namkum to inaugurate MGNREGA payment through Aadhaar and waited for the CM for about 1.45 hours to begin the programme about a month ago.
The outspoken Minister went ahead and questioned the administrative setup, political leadership and level transparency prevailing in the State to make development schemes successful. “MGNREGA is being criticised and rightly so. But what I think is an impressive show in Jharkhand about the scheme and it is digging 90,000 wells in rural areas. These well are not on paper. It has brought above two lakh hectares of land under irrigation,” said Ramesh and called upon the State Government to take up more such initiatives so that the people could repose faith in the rural job scheme.
He also advised the CM for studying the Andhra Pradesh model on woman self-help groups and carve-out a separate financial institution for women so that bank loans can be made available to them.