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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | UPA flagship NREGS records sharp slide in job generation -Subodh Varma

UPA flagship NREGS records sharp slide in job generation -Subodh Varma

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published Published on Feb 3, 2013   modified Modified on Feb 3, 2013
-The Times of India

While Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh waxed eloquent on the "success" of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and called it a key instrument for "financial inclusion" at a government conference in New Delhi on Saturday, latest data reveal a picture of declining employment generation under the scheme. Even more startling: Jobs created for the most marginalized sections - dalits and adivasis - have suffered the biggest decline.

Between 2009-10 and 2011-12, the total work generated by this flagship scheme declined from 284crore persondays to 211crore persondays. That's a dip of about 25% over the first three years of UPA II. (One personday is one person working for a day). The data for the current year up to January-end suggests that there will be a further dip in 2012-13.

Some states that have shown major decline in MGNREGS jobs over this period are Karnataka (65% decline), Rajasthan (53%), Assam (52%), Gujarat (47%), Bihar (45%) and Madhya Pradesh (40%). In most of these states, jobs for dalits have declined by 70% or more.

Only a handful of states — Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Haryana, Chhattisgarh and Jammu & Kashmir — have shown an increase in jobs created under the scheme. However, in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh this increase hides a bitter reality — work given to dalits actually declined while work given to "others", that is, upper caste poor, increased.

Work to dalits declined

In the case of dalit households, work created under MGNREGS came down by a staggering 46% over the first three years of UPA II, from about 86crore to 47crore persondays. Adivasi households too seem to be getting increasingly excluded from this lifeline of employment as work given to them declined by 35%, from 59crore to 38crore persondays. This data is put out by the ministry of rural development.

Participation of women too is on the decline. Between 2009-10 and 2011-12, work done by women in the scheme declined by 25%, from 136crore persondays down to 102crore persondays.

The latest data for the current year shows that a total of 146crore persondays of work under the scheme has been done as of February 2. With less than two months left in the year, it seems very unlikely that the total for the year would reach even the 211crore persondays recorded last year.

The trend is thus unmistakable — in each year, total jobs created under the scheme have declined, and the decline is more pronounced in the case of dalit and adivasi households.

Pramathesh Ambasta of the NREGA Consortium, an advocacy group, says that decline is taking place partly because there is lack of awareness that MGNREGS work is a right rather than something the "system will provide".

"Wherever implementing agencies have gone into campaign mode and efforts to step up demand have been made, mostly with civil society intervention, the persondays demanded and generated have both gone up dramatically," he said. Ambasta also points at shortage of dedicated human resources at the gram panchayat level, which delays planning, measurements and payments.

Rahul Banerjee of Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangathan in the remote tribal-dominated district of Alirajpur, Madhya Pradesh, says that shortage of technical and accounting manpower exists because they are supposed to be supported by state government funds which are always lacking.

"As the number of villages covered has increased, the number of people actually working has decreased because it becomes difficult for the skeletal staff to cover more villages and provide more work in them," he said.

Delays in payment of wages are a crucial factor in discouraging very poor families, like dalits and adivasis, from seeking MGNREGS work. According to government data, payments to about 27% of those who had worked were delayed by up to 30 days. That's a very long time for a cash-strapped family to survive in the lean season. So, they slip back into their customary ways — migrating out to work, or doing piecemeal manual labour for low wages.

"In Alirajpur, the labourers prefer to migrate to Gujarat and work as construction and agricultural labourers," said Banerjee.

The Times of India, 3 February, 2013, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/UPA-flagship-NREGS-records-sharp-slide-in-job-generation/articleshow/18311867.cms


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