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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | UPA gearing up to roll out NREGA-II by Devesh Kumar

UPA gearing up to roll out NREGA-II by Devesh Kumar

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published Published on Jul 12, 2010   modified Modified on Jul 12, 2010


Seeking to build on the strengths of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) while, at the same time, eliminating its main deficiencies and shortcomings, the rural development ministry is planning to take UPA government’s flagship project to a new level.

A three-day-long workshop of the coordination group attached to the ministry, as also other principal stakeholders, gets underway at the Hyderabad-based National Institute of Rural Development from Monday.

On the discussion table will be the reports prepared by the six working groups which had been set up by the ministry in March this year to study various aspects affecting the execution of the Manmohan Singh government’s showpiece rural regeneration project.

The reports, ministry sources pointed out, will form the basis of the moves to take the scheme to a higher plane. “We’re gearing up to roll out MGNREGA-II,” a senior official of the ministry pointed out.

Each of the six working groups were tasked to study a separate and distinctive aspect. While the group on planning and execution was headed by Central Employment Guarantee Council member Ranga Rao, that on wages was chaired by NAC member Jean Dreze.

Another prominent civil society activist, Ms Arun Roy, who’s also a member of the NAC, was anointed the chairperson of the working group on transparency and accountability while CEGC member Ashwani Kumar was asked to lead the group on capacity-building. Former union minister Renuka Choudhari headed the panel on specific needs of specific category of workers, and Mr K S Gopal, a non-official member of the CEGC, was named the chairman of the group on works to be taken up on individual land.

While the reports of the six working groups would form the main platform for discussions at the three-day-long brainstorming session, it was felt that the three main issues that needed to be addressed included strengthening implementation mechanism by greater transparency and accountability, improving the project’s planning and convergence with other schemes to make it more fruitful and productive.

“Implementation issues and policy correctives — these are the main issues to be looked into,” remarked the senior rural development ministry official.

Deluged with complaints of corruption and fraud in many districts, the ministry has already introduced several measures to tackle them. Realising the importance of technology, it has set in motion an elaborate exercise to weave in technological innovations such as ICT and bio-metric system to bring down levels of corruption.

Taking an important step in this direction, the ministry had last month signed an MoU with the UIDA. “We intend to make the NREGA processes GPS and biometric system-enabled in an effort to weed out corruption,” the official pointed out.

An important tool in monitoring the execution of MGNREGA has been the initiation of Management Information System (MIS) — the device through which the ministry officials can check online the progress of various schemes being implemented across the country in each of the 619 districts, down to the block level. “We plan to extend ICT to the lowest levels in the coming months,” the official pointed out.

The ministry has, over a period of time, identified several distortions in the implementation of the programme. These include absence of grass-root planning, fudging of muster rolls, muster rolls being created at the time of payment, role of contractors, significant leakages and pilferages, delayed payment, no work on demand, no compensation, poor quality of works, no written applications and ineffective social audit.


The Economic Times, 12 July, 2010, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/UPA-gearing-up-to-roll-out-NREGA-II/articleshow/6157016.cms


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