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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

'Only 25% families got job under MGNREGS in UP' by Arvind Singh Bisht

The mid-term appraisal of the rural development programmes during the ongoing 11th Five-Year Plan points out several holes in the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Uttar Pradesh. This not only reaffirms the public perception of poor performance of UP, but also sets aside the defence put up against scathing criticism of her government by chief minister Mayawati time and again.

The development has come as a stimulus for the Congress, which is already engaged in a war of words with the ruling BSP after being denied permission to hold Kisan Mahapanchayat in Bhatta-Parsaul.

Some of the salient points underlined in the mid-term appraisal conducted by the Giri Institute of Development Studies (GIDS) are: low fund utilisation, poor coverage of the BPL (below poverty line) families, low women participation, declining demand of MGNREGS jobs and non-fulfilment of the target of providing 100 days jobs to a vast majority of the beneficiaries.

In his observation in the voluminous mid-term appraisal report, senior fellow at GIDS, GS Mehta, said, "In order to take full benefit of the scheme, the state needs to reorient itself and do enough to spread the scheme in the state, where agriculture remains the mainstay of the economy. Despite low productivity, large number of landless labourers go without job for most part of the year."

The poor performance of the programme is evident by the fact that only 25% of the total BPL households (over 7 crore) have been provided employment. This is much below than the national average of 54%. Although the programme is not limited to BPL households alone, an analysis of the data indicates low outreach of the programme in terms of job cards issued and employment provided to rural BPL households.

The worrying fact is that the demand of MGNREGS employment has been consistently declining over the years. This could be gauged from the percentage of job card holding households, who demanded employment. From 67% in the first phase, demand declined to 56% in the second phase and stood at 41% in the third phase.

What also goes against the UP government is the dipping figures of job cards issued to households belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes over the last three phases of MGNREGS in the state. This in the light of the situation, when the government is not tired of emphasising its dalit agenda to keep its vote bank intact ahead of the assembly poll due in 2012 in the state.

Districts where fund utilisation is very low are Fatehpur, Ambedkar Nagar, Deoria, Gautam Buddh Nagar (Noida), Kushinagar and Moradabad. Likewise, Saharanpur, Mathura, Agra and Sultanpur constitute districts, where expenditure is much below the mandatory 60%. In the same vein, low completion rate of works have been found in Chitrakoot, Kaushambi, Baghpat and Kashiram Nagar. Apart from this, inequalities exist in allocation of funds to different districts and in majority of districts, the created demand of employment is very poor in proportion to that of landless and marginal farm households.

The major drawback is that only 6% of job seekers have been provided 100 days jobs in a year. The share of women in total mandays employment is around 17%. Starting from 22 districts in the first phase implemented in 2006-07, MGNREGS was extended to another 17 districts in second phase in 2007-08 and to all 71 districts in the third phase in 2008-09.

The share of fund spent on administrative machinery, however, has gone up constantly. This was 1.9% in the first phase and 2.51% in the second phase. And now this has gone up to around 4 %. Such an increase comes under question, especially when no additional staff has been recruited. An overall assessment shows that western UP happen to be worst performer in comparison to eastern UP and Bundelkhand. This is attributed to various factors, including poverty and agriculture productivity, besides a large number of landless and marginal farmers in the last two regions.

However, the situation is also not so rosy in these two regions, as only a minuscule minority is lucky to get hassle free jobs for 100 days in a year. Over 90% of the sample households in this survey are extremely poor dalits.

While, irregularities are the only regular feature, there is also little transparency and accountability in the implementation of the rural job scheme in Bundelkhand. The grievance redressal mechanism is as good as non-existent. In most of the villages of Bundelkhand, large numbers of poor workers have migrated to cities and towns in search of employment. In the implementation of the MGNREGS in Bundelkhand, there has been guarantee of only corruption, unemployment, poverty, hunger and humiliation.