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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | NREGA completes 5 years: Nanded farmers reap benefits

NREGA completes 5 years: Nanded farmers reap benefits

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published Published on Feb 17, 2011   modified Modified on Feb 17, 2011
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme completes five years this year. A week before the budget, CNBC TV18's Gopika Gopakumar travels to the interiors of Maharashtra to find out how the NREGA scheme is getting implemented.

Pandurni village, in Nanded District of Maharashtra, is in high spirits. It has won the award for best performance in implementing the rural employment guarantee scheme for 2009-10.

Around 1,500 people from this village are registered under this scheme, and over 800 have benefitted from it. Yahswant Suryavanshi is one of them. This owner of 2 hectare of agricultural land says, “Water is not scarce anymore, thanks to the well sunk under the NREGA scheme. Farmers now produce three times more than before. We can sow crops like fenugreek, chilli, tomato in the same soil. Earlier, we could sow only one crop in one year. Now we can sow 1 crop in three months.”

Pandurni is a rain-fed village, which lies near the Maharashtra-Karnataka border. Under NREGA, projects have been undertaken in Pandurni that mainly address the problem of drought.

Shikar Pardeshi, Collector, Nanded District said, “Nanded is a predominantly agricultural district, which was reeling under water scarcity. NREGA proved to be a boon for laborers as it protected them during the bad years of scarcity.”

Pardeshi added that Pandurni has completed over 100 irrigation projects so far and the biggest of these is this rocky bund, which was built by nearly 200 villagers. This project has helped control soil erosion.

Rajendra Wagmare, Gram Rozgar Sevak, Pandurni said, “This Bund helps raise the water level, which has helped irrigation. The flat land around this area was once barren, but with higher water level, irrigation has become easier, and the farmer can grow vegetables here.”

Has the NREGA scheme become a success story for the government?

Officials say that the scheme has even stopped the migration of laborers and other unemployment-related problems have also been staved off.

Govind Ram, Farmer, Pandurni, Maharashtra said, “In the last 2-3 years, I haven't gone anywhere. Earlier I used to go to Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai to find work. Now, I don't go anywhere.”

Vasant Ravan Gaonkar, Assistant Programme Coordinator NREGA, Mukhed Pandurni, Maharashtra, said, “Because migration has stopped, school drop outs have also stopped. Moneylenders' problem has also reduced.”

NREGA is a well executed scheme as the Gram Panchayat has played a crucial role in effective implementation of many of these schemes.

Shravan Hardikar, CEO -  Zilla Parishad, Nanded, said, “Whenever there are complaints, our district vigilance and monitoring committee, which is comprised of engineers and other persons visits the site and conducts social audit in the village. If there are engineers who are not doing inspection, we have taken actions against them. It has been found that some engineer never visited the site and blindly signed for the inspection. He has been suspended.”

NREGA: Are the costs exceeding benefits?

Despite these claims, doubts of funds seepage persist. The state has yet to make an analysis of how much benefit the NREGA delivers and at what cost per capita.

Pandurni is the only village in Maharashtra, which has figured prominently on the map of NREGA. However, one needs to see whether this kind of an asset creation is sustainable and whether this will help not only the people in this village but the state of Maharashtra to come out of poverty.

MoneyControl.com, 16 February, 2011, http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/cnbc-tv18-comments/nrega-completes-5-years-nanded-farmers-reap-benefits_524032.html


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