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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Government's rural employment scheme MGNREGA leaves a lot to be desired-Urmi Goswami
-The Economic Times

The positive impact on agricultural wages and distress migration from rural areas not withstanding, the government's flagship rural employment scheme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, leaves a lot to be desired for.

This is evident from the rural development ministry's compendium of more than 100 major research papers on the programme, MGNREGA Sameeksha.

The slim 120-odd page volume, which is to be released by the Prime Minister on Saturday, draws attention to the role that the rural employment guarantee programme plays in providing social security.

"While market-oriented reforms are necessary to generate faster growth and larger public resources, they do not, on their own guarantee participatory and equitable growth. Active social policies such as the MGNREGA, far from detracting from economic reforms, complement them in an essential way," rural development minister Jairam Ramesh writes in the foreword to the volume.

Nonethess, the minister acknowledges that there are major challenges. "Implementation remains uneven and patchy", Ramesh writes. But perhaps the biggest challenge is improving the quality and sustainability of assets created under the programme.

In the initial years, the major focus was on roads, especially as given the non-contractor approach to works under NREGA. However, these roads are not black-topped and will not survive a very heavy downpour. The return on such investment is limited.

Since inception of MGNREGA, around 146 lakh works have been undertaken, of these almost 51 percent are works related to water, and over 19 per cent works are related to rural connectivity. Studies referred to in the volume raise the question of quality of assets created.

The chapter on Sustainable Asset Creation refers to the research studies which detail that when planned and executed well, there is a positive return on investments for MGNREGA assets.

A study on the comprehensive study on return on investments related to MGNREGA works across eight districts of Bihar, Gujarat, Kerala and Rajasthan considered 143 best performing water-related assets, and it was found that 117 assets had a return on investment of over 100 percent in the first year itself.

These projects relating to water systems has had a beneficial impact in terms of crop productivity and reduced expenses on diesel.

But clearly there is a limit to these efforts. Ramesh is aware that the issue of quality of asset created under the programme has to be addressed. In a recent interview to Yuvadesh, the Youth Congress's online magazine, Ramesh said, "How much labor will you do? How many ditches will you dig? How many ponds will you reconstruct? How much forestation will you do? There has to be a limit."

"Governance and process challenges', which includes references to studies on leakages and misappropriations in the scheme and need for transparency, accountability and accuracy of monthly progress reports are included in the volume. In the past, Ramesh has advocated the use of a strong management information system (MIS) to track the flow of funds. Since most states don't have transaction-based MIS it is very easy to have fraudulent transactions.

"at a time when the ministry of rural development is endeavouring to put in placean independent, professionally run concurrent evaluation network for all rural development programmes, I think this volume will be usefulreference and resource publication and would stimulate further field level research," Ramesh writes in the foreword.

The MGNREGA Sameeksha also includes studies on the impact that the programme has had on economic independence and empowerment of women and self-help groups, enhancement of agricultural production, impact on the agricultural labour, increasing the bargaining power of the villagers and choice of work besides sharp drop in migration of labour in hunt of employment.