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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Drought effect: Asset creation gathers pace by Devika Banerji

Drought effect: Asset creation gathers pace by Devika Banerji

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published Published on Mar 8, 2011   modified Modified on Mar 8, 2011

There is a silver lining to the drought that hit India in 2009-10. Although it sapped the country's growth, it led to an almost doubling of physical assets created under the government's flagship rural employment scheme that year.

The drought of 2009-10 was the worst that the country had faced in 17 years. As regular jobs in the farm sector dried up, more people sought work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, or MGNREGS , helping create assets that boost farm productivity and minimise the impact of droughts and floods.

" The drought was a blessing in disguise and we got a lot of work done and the statistics prove that," said an official in the rural development ministry .

The physical assets created include rural roads, flood and drought proofing measures like water harvesting, irrigation and land development projects, renovation of traditional water bodies and micro irrigation assets, among others.

"The quality of the work done is given much less credit than it should be. Rajasthan is full of water harvesting assets created under the scheme and they have helped agriculture and they are quite sustainable," said Nikhil Dey, founder, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan.

However, the current year, which has seen good rains, has registered a drop in the number of development jobs taken up under the scheme. Officials attribute this drop to adequate monsoon rains and say it should be seen as a positive sign as MGNREGA is meant to act as a backup for crisis years.

But activists and civil society organisations disagree. They blame administrative inefficiency and increasing corruption in the scheme for the low level of asset creation. "The demand was there and still is, but there was a lot of problem in sanctioning and delivering money for the scheme in the current year," Dey said.

The ministry official said: "The complaints about administrative inefficiencies are valid to a certain extent but it cannot be seen as the reason for the decline in works in the current year. Administrative issues are improving every year and not the other way round."

Data for the current fiscal till February shows an 82% drop in the number of projects completed under MGNREGA for creation of physical assets.

Though rainfall was good during the year, Bihar, West Bengal and some north-eastern states saw drought-like conditions for the second consecutive year.

The scheme's relatively good performance in 2009-10 had led the government to give it a budgetary allocation of 40,100 crore for 2010-11, one of the highest for the year.

However, the allocation for the coming year has been kept stagnant at 40,000 crore as the department was unable to spend nearly 17,000 crore in the current fiscal.


The Economic Times, 7 March, 2011, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/drought-effect-asset-creation-gathers-pace/articleshow/7643435.cms


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