I feel that you greatly underestimate the potential of NREGA. I witnessed many impressive works last year when I was doing my field work and am confident that these could be replicated elsewhere. The reason why such impressive works do not happen in most places is not because manual labour is not capable of being productive. I think two other reasons are paramount: one, creating useful assets has a relatively long term impact on which we seem to pay much less attention as a society. Two, technical support and the time taken to plan good works is minimal. The engineers who are supposed plan these works are so overburdened in almost every state and have so little information resources (like rainfall data, detailed maps, etc.) that they are unable to put the time required to do a good plan. People living in these villages are typically highly resourceful…but using collective wisdom is a long process on which we have not put our resources.
What we need to do is to generate the will required to make planning a priority. That would be important irrespective of NREGA. Water management, soil conservation, afforestation and other things are so fundamentally important but ignored that we cannot afford not to be a priority – at least forever. And if we do make them a collective priority, I feel that NREGA is the best mechanism available to deliver us the goods.

Thank you for writing in: Vivek

But the main drawback of the Act is that is too focused on manual labour, which hardly adds to the productivity of the nation.

Instead I firmly believe NREGA must also include paid training worshops for such unemployed rural people, so that they are equipped with skill set for a better job prospects.

e.g. rural un-employed women can be trained to become assitants at Primary Health Centers(PHCs or under ASHA Scheme), Anganwadi centers etc.