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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Despite being around for a decade, MGNREGS continues to be plagued by leakages, fraud -Dinesh Narayanan

Despite being around for a decade, MGNREGS continues to be plagued by leakages, fraud -Dinesh Narayanan

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published Published on Mar 18, 2016   modified Modified on Mar 18, 2016

-The Economic Times

 

I will never make the mistake of discontinuing M(G)NREGA; because it is a living testimony of your failures. After 60 years of Independence you had to make people dig ditches — Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In that March 2015 speech in Parliament, Prime Minister Modi taunted the Congress Party that the rural job guarantee programme Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) was required because of the party's long misrule. A decade after launch, the scheme arguably remains pregnant with politics and one of the most debated of central government initiatives. It is perhaps also one of the most intensely studied welfare schemes with dozens of NGOs and academics minutely scrutinizing its implementation and impact.

Although conceived as a welfare programme to fight rural joblessness during the lean farming season, it was also meant to help in drought-proofing and creating assets such as wells and ponds. But flaws in its design have led to large-scale leakages, delayed payments and skewed benefits.

"You can always announce programmes. But past experience shows that a lot of money is wasted,'' says NC Saxena, a former rural development secretary and federal planner. On March 16, 2016, there were 10 crore active labourers under MGNREGS.

Of them, 6 crore had the unique identification number Aadhar seeded in their job cards. About 3.8 crore of those were verified and 2.3 crore actually got paid wages directly into their Aadhar-backed bank accounts, according to a report rural development ministry officials get every morning on a Whatsapp group. So how effective is the programme?

An Institute for Human Development study of wells dug using MGNREGS in Jharkhand shows that wherever actual assets have been created, they have directly contributed to increase in incomes. The study found that completed wells yielded an average rate of return of 6.5% annually. Net incomes in the wells' catchment area rose by an average 190%.

Another independent organisation, Sambodhi Research and Communications, found in a six-state study that 42% of households did not return to seek work under the scheme when assets were created on their land though 29% of those did not return because they did not agree with the choice of work. But 90% of those surveyed reported a perceived rise in income due to assets created under MGNREGS.

But the main criticism against MGNREGS has been bogus enrollment and siphoning off of funds without creating any assets. Often payments are delayed for months forcing job-seekers to desert the scheme.
 
NREGS chart
 
 
Officials in the ministry of rural development admit that relatively better off states corner most of the funds compared to very poor states. Former planner Saxena points out that in 2014-15, Bihar spent Rs 1,073 crore on MGNREGS while Tamil Nadu spent four times that at Rs 3,908 crore even though the number of rural poor in Bihar is six times that of Tamil Nadu. Often, the asset claimed to have been created is only on paper. The IHD study in Jharkhand found 72 wells that were reported dug were missing which points to widespread corruption.

The rural development ministry now plans to hold camps in villages to document, verify and match job seekers, job cards, their bank accounts and Aadhar numbers. "From April 1, we will geo-tag all MGNREGS assets created. It will help weed out bogus claims of work,'' an official said. He said the loopholes would be plugged by the end of the year.

The Economic Times, 17 March, 2016, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/despite-being-around-for-a-decade-mgnregs-continues-to-be-plagued-by-leakages-fraud/articleshow/51434238.cms


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