When building more toilets is a human necessity, should NREGA funds be used to fence graveyards?

Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh got high TRPs for suggesting that India has more temples than toilets. Whether this is the right comparison to make is an open question, but there’s little doubt India is woefully short of this basic human requirement — a private place to defecate, both for reasons of public hygiene and personal health.

So let us grant Ramesh the best of secular intentions. We have to take care of people here on earth first, and let the gods worry about their place in our scheme of things.

One wonders then why the huge funding available for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA, or NREGA) — over Rs 33,000 crore earmarked in the 2012-13 budget – cannot be used for this purpose to make India the toilet capital of the world. The main criticism against NREGA is that it creates few long-term assets even though wage costs are high.

But there is another side to Ramesh as well. Even as he talks of toilets and temples in the same breath, he has offered to use NREGA money to live-fence dargahs and graveyards in a letter to the National Commission of Minorities Chairman, Wajahat Habibullah.

Once again, fencing dargahs may be a good cause, but is it a priority? According to a report in The Indian Express, Habibullah had suggested the use of NREGA funds for this purpose, and Ramesh responded that dargahs and graveyards can “be provided with live fencing under the Land Development and Plantation works category of MGNREGA for which provisions may be made in the shelf of work maintained by the gram panchayat”.

Surely, Mr Ramesh, toilets should take precedence over the fencing or dargahs too?

NREGA funds are not meant to be disbursed for quasi-religious purposes. When the Supreme Court has itself suggested the phaseout of the Haj subsidy, for Ramesh to suggest that a universal social security scheme like NREGA can be used to fence dargahs and eidgahs needs questioning.

Temples and dargahs ought not to be the concern of a secular government.