In fact, that it uses up one-third of one percentage point of GDP to create only some work for 50 million households — in a country of 1.25 billion people — sounds like a poor rate of return to me, compared to alternative uses for scarce government funds.Third, the letter tells us, in somewhat disingenuous fashion, that corruption levels have steadily declined. What the authors don’t tell us is that corruption and leakage remain a huge issue for NREGA as for other government schemes, with opportunity for enrichment by corrupt officials on the whole chain from the centre down to the state, the district, the sub-district and so forth.