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Survey picks holes in UPA's MGNREGA scheme-Rajeev Deshpande
-The Times of India

UPA's flagship rural guarantee scheme is performing fitfully in terms of work days, wages and coverage, amply confirming rural development minister Jairam Ramesh's fears that the programme has become a scheme for digging ditches.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee, UPA's outreach to the poor, is not meeting critical parameters and is crying out for reform with questions about the utility a Rs 36,000-crore a year budget growing louder, an official survey has revealed.

A MNREGA survey, conducted in Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, and submitted recently to the government has shown that in 2010-11 the average number of days worked per household in projects covered by the scheme was 45, 37 and 52 for the three states, respectively.

The minimum employment guaranteed under the Act is 100 days per person and although the programme is demand driven, barely 50% of the days are being claimed. This can mean the poor do not need to access MNREGA, or the scheme suffers from implementation glitches.

Non-payment of full wages is a persistent complaint. And, the survey says the average wage received per day by a person in MNREGA works was Rs 94, Rs 98 and Rs 79 in AP, MP and Rajasthan, respectively. This indicates leakages at the local level, a complaint most recently brought home to Congress president Sonia Gandhi during her visit to Karnataka.

Political figures like MPs and district administrators have claimed they were hard put to use MNREGA budgets and are forced to "find" work and this feedback led Ramesh to tell Yuvadesh, the online Youth Congress magazine, that "How many ditches will you dig? How much labour work you can do? How many trees you will plant? There is a limit to creation of community asset as well. We have to see whether there is a need to increase the work days or reduce them."

The survey would confirm some of these misgivings. The average number of days worked in MNREGA per person was 25, 22 and 38 in AP, MP and Rajasthan, respectively, and seemed a reflection of low unemployment rates of 7%, 8% and 4% for these states. This might mean a high degree of employment of farm and other forms of labour.

The share of MNREGA work in total man days worked was 4% in Rajasthan, AP (3%) and MP (1%). About 2% of MNREGA workers in AP reported availability of other work, while this was 10% of Rajasthan and negligible for MP.

It was also found that 25%, 17% and 36% households in AP, MP and Rajasthan, respectively, participated in MNREGA works. The monthly per capita expenditure for households who used the scheme was Rs 918, Rs 654 and Rs 930 for these states, respectively.

For AP, MP and Rajasthan, the households that benefitted from MNREGA stood at 84%, 78% and 62%, respectively, and they were from "agricultural labour" or "self-employed in agriculture".

There is, on the positive side, high awareness on all the three states about the rural guarantee, a finding that will please a government keen to brand itself as "pro-poor". However, here too, Congress has received complaints that states have sometimes claimed credit. Also, on the downside, specifics of the scheme are not as well disseminated.

Most of the households were from scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward castes, confirming that these sections remain most vulnerable to economic distress. This will encourage those in government who are arguing that MNREGA serves an important social function.

About 34% households in AP were not aware of a grievance redressal mechanism, and this was the case with 23% households in MP and Rajasthan (9%).