Developing capacities of village officials Samarthan, however, also discovered that village secretaries lacked the capacity to plan work projects or to budget for work demands; the federal govern­ment had not trained the officials to perform this task. As a result, the planning and budgeting were being undertaken by officers at the district level. This created imbal­ances and operational problems. If the implementation of NREGS was to improve, village officials would need to learn how to plan and budget for it. Samarthan helped village officials to identify public works that, according to the law, could be used to respond to job demands. These public works were assembled into a plan, which provided officials with a list of projects readily availa­ble to generate employment. This plan received technical and administra­tive approvals from officials at the block level. Samarthan also trained the village secretary to prepare and request labor budgets. On the basis of the number of people holding job cards together with the average number of people reporting for work during the previous year, Samarthan and village officials estimated the likely upcoming demand for work. These estimates were used to calculate the likely cost and finally translate it into a budget number. Samarthan’s willingness to sit down with village officials and work with them to find solutions earned the organization their respect. That respect together with the organization’s ties to the communities gave it substantial power in dealing with officials above the village level. When a government under-spends an ESC rights-related budget, it is failing to comply with its MAR obligation. Sometimes the under-spending may be the result of a lack of capacity by civil servants to properly and fully implement a program. Government must do its utmost to identify where such capacity is lacking and, when it has identified a lack, move quickly to increase the capacity of civil servants/ government service providers to do their jobs. Moreover, a government cannot excuse itself from its human rights obligations simply because a civil society group is willing to undertake a task that is the government’s responsibility.