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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

UPA Govt's NREGA back on table for removing flaws by Devika Banerji

New rural development minister Jairam Ramesh is working to overhaul the United Progressive Alliance's six-year old flagship rural jobs programme to rid it of all 'manmade' flaws and make the job entitlement more demand driven. The Mahatma GandhiNational Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNERGA), which costs the government Rs 40,000 crore a year - the largest spend on any social welfare scheme - played a key role in catapulting theUPA government back to power in the general elections of 2009.

The scheme, however, has floundered on the ground because of red tape and corruption. "There are many issues in the scheme and most of them are administrative in nature," said Ramesh, who had been involved in the drafting of the landmark legislation as a member of theNational Advisory Council. "All are man made...there is a need to revamp the scheme to address them." Starting with a complete administrative revamp, the government plans to link MGNREGA to a cluster of mini watersheds, or aquifers, in a cluster of panchayats, or village councils.

The government also aims to make the scheme truly demand driven by moving to a system of receipts, which will clearly mention the date work was demanded. Works taken up under the scheme will cease to be the sole domain of panchayats and involve the planning prowess of civil engineers, hydrologists and grassroots workers. A revamped, more decentralised MGNREGA is likely to be tried out first in 200 most-backward districts of the country. Resources will be met through 6% of the allocations earmarked for administrative expenses.

"The scheme needs to be linked to asset creation,"Planning Commission member Mihir Shah said. "The assets also have to be built in a planned way and should be sustainable. For that, one will have to involve people with technical knowledge at the planning level." This will require setting up of a multi-disciplinary technical support group for every aquifer, which is roughly a cluster of panchayats covering 500 households.

The government is also likely to expand the scope of works under the scheme to accommodate state specific rural activities, like horticulture, organic farming and animal rearing. Currently, MGNREGA works are primarily restricted to drought-proofing activities and small village infrastructure projects like building and repairing rural roads.

"There is a problem with the fundamental structure of the programme," said N C Saxena, a member of the National Advisory Council. "Assets should be tracked for six years and their sustainbility should be monitored." Shah said the rural employment programme, envisioned to be a demand driven scheme, is far off from its objective. "The scheme has not been a demanddriven one for the last six years," he said.


"There is no system in place to know and assess demand in any state. It has basically become a mere dole... You get work only if the government chooses to start work. This has to be rectified," he added. In the new system, a worker demanding work will be issued a dated receipt, which will entitle him to a MGNREGA work within 15 days or unemployment allowance afterward. At present, demand is calculated through a labour budget by taking the average employment provided in the past few years.

These labour budgets are used to give budgetary allocations to states every year. TheCentral Employment Guarantee Council has also repeatedly suggested putting in place a survey system every year to gauge the extent and seasonality of demand in every state and base the labour budgets on that. "As I see it, the central problem seems to be absence of any planning at any level in MGNREGA," said Vijay Shankar, member of Samaj Pragati Sahyog, a grassroots organisation. "This labour budget bears no relationship with the actual work demand in the village. There is a need for reform."