This paper reflects on the shortcomings of the Food for Work (FFW) programme in Andhra Pradesh to provide employment to drought-affected poor people. It shows how design faults, administrative mismanagement and local politics created conditions that were conducive to the large-scale misappropriation of resources meant for the poor. Drawing upon 12 months of primary field research (conducted in 2001 and 2002), it documents the processes that led to the illicit diversion of rice and the exclusion of very poor and lower caste people in six villages in AP.