AS I write, roughly 10.3 million workers return home as the sun sets on 4.9 lakh worksites across the length and breadth of this vast country under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. About 23 percent are Scheduled Castes, and 17 percent are Scheduled Tribes. With a failed monsoon and drought behind them, and fall in the growth rate of real wages, this employment and wages could offer the much needed succor from the consequent misery and even check distress out-migration.