The same implementation structure that has failed rural development over decades cannot be deployed for the radically new programme promised by NREGA. Barely two years on, there is a clamour for scrapping the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The chorus is led by no less than the Chief Minister of one of India's most populous and backward States. We live in a strange country. We have fanatics who want to put up barricades to debar "outsiders' from entering our metros. Others suggest that speaking for the farmer is "the idiocy of urban thinking' (Sagarika Ghose, H industan Times, February 15, 2008). They repeat ad nauseam what Indian planners have been trying for the last 50 years