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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | NREGA: Effects and Implications -Nandini Nayak

NREGA: Effects and Implications -Nandini Nayak

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published Published on Mar 13, 2014   modified Modified on Mar 13, 2014
-NewsYaps.com


In 2005, the Parliament of India enacted a landmark legislation known as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The aim of this law, renamed ‘Mahatma Gandhi NREGA' in 2009, was to create a legally enforceable guarantee of employment for any adult from rural India willing to do casual manual labour on local public works at a statutory minimum wage. Public works programmes have long been implemented in India as a drought relief measure. However, earlier programmes (other than Maharashtra's Employment Guarantee Scheme, a precursor of NREGA) were relatively limited in scope, did not create any legal entitlements, and were implemented at the discretion of the government of the day.

Under the NREGA, all adults from rural households are entitled to be employed in or near their own village, allowing them some security of livelihood and enabling them to avoid distress migration. Subject to a cap of 100 days of work per year per household, rural adults can demand employment from the Gram Panchayat (village council) on local worksites such as rural roads, public ponds and soil or water conservation structures. Work has to be provided within fifteen days of demand, failing which workers are entitled to claim an unemployment allowance from the government. Importantly, women and men working on NREGA worksites areentitled to the same wage, and wages are to be paid within fifteen days of completing work.

The enactment of the NREGA was significant by any standards, and it created the largest public works programme of its kind in the world. In 2011-12, about 50 million rural households worked under the programme, according to official data.

The primary objective of NREGA is to offer some social protection to rural workers otherwise living a precarious life, and highly vulnerable to distress migration, hunger and malnutrition. According to World Bank estimates, 33% of Indians lived below the international poverty line of $1.25 per day in 2010, and 69% lived on less than $2 per day (in purchasing power parity terms). An important reason for poverty is insecure access to livelihood. NREGA aims to address this insecurity faced by the vast majority of rural workers who are exposed to all the vulnerabilities of the informal sector.

The significance of the NREGA for rural workers exposed to livelihood insecurity can be gauged from a survey conducted in 2008. This survey was carried out in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, six states that account for about 40% of India's population. It was clear that the ‘self-targeting' feature of the NREGA was working well: the programme was being used primarily by workers from impoverished sections of society. Of the sample NREGA workers, 81% lived in a mud house or other ‘kaccha' (non-permanent) dwelling, 73% belonged to scheduled caste or scheduled tribe families, 61% were illiterate and 72% had no electricity at home. Further, the programme was an important source of social protection for NREGA workers. Sixty-nine per cent of the sample workers stated that the NREGA had helped them to avoid hunger, 47% said that it had helped their family cope with illness and 57% felt that the NREGA helped them to avoid distress migration.

An important reason for poverty is insecure access to livelihood. NREGA aims to address this insecurity faced by the vast majority of rural workers who are exposed to all the vulnerabilities of the informal sector.

The survey also brought out that the NREGA is particularly significant for women workers. Only 30% of the women workers interviewed had earned any income other than NREGA wages in the three months prior to the survey. Not only did the NREGA provide women workers with an independent income, a majority of them also stated that they collected and kept their own wages.

In May-June 2013, a ‘PEEP Survey' on five key public entitlement programmes (ICDS, MDMS, PDS, NREGA and Pensions) was conducted in ten Indian states. This time again, it was found that the NREGA is used overwhelmingly by workers who otherwise have insecure sources of livelihood. Of the sample workers across ten states, 80.5% lived in a non-permanent or semi-permanent dwelling, 53% belonged to scheduled caste or scheduled tribe families, 50% were illiterate and 34% had no electricity at home. We were hoping to find evidence that the programme had improved, and further helped them to escape this insecurity, but we were disappointed.

In some respects, little had changed. For instance, it was remarkable that workers' awareness of their entitlements seemed to be much the same in 2013 as in 2008. In both years, about half of the sample workers knew that the employment guarantee under NREGA extended to 100 days of work per household per year. In other respects, things were worse in 2013, particularly the scale of NREGA employment. In seven of the ten states covered by the PEEP survey, there were hardly any active worksites in the sample villages. Forty-nine per cent of the survey respondents (men or women with a job card) had got no NREGA work at all in the preceding 12 months.

There was little evidence of a declining demand for NREGA work. When survey respondents were asked how many days they would like to work on NREGA this year if they are paid the minimum wage without delay, most of them wanted 100 days - the upper limit under the Act.

Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and to a lesser extent Himachal Pradesh were the better performing states in relation to the NREGA. On the whole though, the present status of the programme should be a cause of great concern. Delays in payments and constant attempts at re-engineering NREGA appear to be the main causes of the collapse of NREGA employment.

The enactment of the NREGA was undoubtedly a significant legislative event, where ‘economic rights' were guaranteed to citizens of India living in rural areas. At the time of its enactment, the NREGA offered the only legally binding source of social protection for rural households. There were also other significant implications of NREGA enactment, such as the possibility of enhancing public probity in the implementation of government programmes and the possibility of strengthening local governance particularly at the level of Gram Panchayats, due to the in-built requirements for regular social audits and public disclosure of NREGA data. A vision of extensive soil and water conservation work in rural areas was implicitly emphasised by the types of public works that were originally envisaged under the NREGA. However, as is indicated by the recent survey conducted in 2013, the availability of a legal entitlement does not by itself lead to proper implementation. Given the significance of the legislation, and the current dismal state of NREGA implementation, it would seem an urgent stock taking is required to revive the programme on the ground.

Dr Nandini Nayak teaches at Ambedkar University, Delhi.

NewsYaps.com, 12 March, 2014, http://www.newsyaps.com/nrega-effects-and-implications/101064/


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