The National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) has already issued a warning: the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) that the Centre wants to push through could cost as much as Rs 32,224 crore. Now, to see if this will be money well spent, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram would do well to speak to Gandharibai Jadhav, pushing 60, who has been building small canals in one drought-hit Satara village after another for the past one and-a-half years. The Central government will immediately enact a National Employment Guarantee Act, providing a legal guarantee for at least 100 days of employment on asset-creating public works programmes every year at minimum wage for every rural household