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Truth vs Hype: NREGA's Moment of Truth (NDTV)

Truth vs Hype: NREGA's Moment of Truth (NDTV)

Published On: 07 March, 2015 | Duration: 19 min, 03 sec

 

Presenter/ Reporter: Sreenivasan Jain (with inputs from Manas Roshan)

 

In his Budget speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley retained the allotment to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA); in fact, increasing it marginally by Rs. 600 crores.

 

But a day earlier Prime Minister Narendra Modi had described NREGA as a 'monument to the UPA's folly', intensifying the perception of his government's deep misgivings with the wages-for-work scheme.

 

That view, however, does not appear to be shared by chief ministers - cutting across party-lines - who have written to the government in the past six months asking for NREGA funds due to them to be urgently released, and for NREGA not to be curtailed.

 

The letters come in the course of a year when the percentage of delayed payments to NREGA workers has risen to 70 pre cent, the highest ever in the scheme's history, a backlog of Rs. 13,000 crores of pending wages.

 

Delays in releasing NREGA funds isn't unique to the new government. Delayed payments went up from 40 per cent in 2012 to 50 per cent a year later, but the problem now seems more acute.

 

The letters accessed by NDTV are addressed to the Rural Development Minister Birender Singh, and in some cases directly to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

 

In his letter to Mr Singh, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan said that "because of delays in release of central funds more than seven lakh NREGA works have been held up."

 

One of the curbs being proposed by the government is to impose a cap on the allotment to states, which goes against the mandate of NREGA as a scheme for which funds are meant to be assigned on the basis of demand from workers. In her letter to Mr Singh, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje opposes the government's proposal, saying "from this financial year, the government of India has indicated a cap on fund allotment which is discouraging field level functionaries and workers".

 

Naveen Patnaik, Odisha Chief Minister wrote to Birender Singh seeking '"immediate intervention in releasing Rs. 1195 crores" to the state. "The implementation of NREGA in the state has come to a complete halt since October due to a paucity of funds," he wrote.

 

"We are alarmed by the growing signs of faltering in the Central government's own commitment to MGNREGA. I appeal to you to ensure that the provisions of NREGA are not diluted in any manner," Hemant Soren, the chief minister of Jharkhand, wrote to Mr Modi in December.

 

The letters also contradict the claim made by some in the government that demand for work under the program has dried up. "Because of inadequate rain in most districts of Madhya Pradesh the demand for NREGA has gone up. Please release the funds at the soonest," Shivraj Singh Chauhan's letter also said.

 

NDTV has also reviewed similar letters from the Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Bihar.

 

Officials in the Rural Development Ministry claim there was nothing deliberate about the delays - caused, partly, due to last year's Budget being a vote on account - but they did concede that deeply critical statements about NREGA by high ranking members of the ruling party may have exacerbated the growing crisis of delayed payments.

 

BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao attributed the delays to administrative obstacles. "We came into power a couple of months after the new financial year kicked in," he said. "And the financial position of the government of India was in an extremely precarious condition".

 

 

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