In August 2005, the Indian Parliament passed the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (nrega). The latest avatar of state-financed employment guarantee schemes (egs) geared to alleviate rural poverty and create natural resource assets formally kicked into existence in February 2006. How will this programme fare? To answer this question, Down To Earth (dte) correspondent nidhi jamwal travelled through Maharashtra -- the first state to implement state-wide egs in 1979. Similarly, dte correspondent kirtiman awasthi travelled through Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh to follow the fate of the erstwhile National Food For Work programme (now subsumed under the current programme). What did they find? One, egs remains a famine relief programme state governments run. Two, it has failed to create productive rural assets, and hence failed to develop The rural economy. Three, in the present scheme of things, egs cannot be successful in areas that are forestlands Four, egs has at best created mere pockets of success. Nevertheless, egs remains the most important source of livelihood and nutrition (via food grain provision) for the rural poor. It remains a most revolutionary scheme, with potential to change rural landscapes. How, then, can the current programme live up to such potential?