Demystifying Racism in India

                                             *Dr. Saumitra Mohan

                It has been more than 67 years since we became independent and it is presumed that the state-nation called India should have by now become a nation-state. But the fact remains that things are far from hunky dory. The fissiparous tendencies fanned by the revisionist forces a la extremists, naxalites, separatists and terrorists continue to work at their prime agendum of balkanizing our beloved country. But much to the chagrin of all the Cassandras and prophets of doom like Selig S Harrison, India as a country has held its ground. While Harrison had declared in the wake of our independence that India would soon fall apart in multiple states (read countries), Pakistan has often vowed to bleed India through thousand cuts. We, however, continue to grow stronger by the day and continue to exist as a country even though many of our time twins in Latin America, Africa and Asia have fallen by the wayside or present the picture of a failed state. And these countries include some of those in South Asia including Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

            But yes, having said this we can’t be all complacent and sit on our laurels. As they say, if you sit on your laurels they run the danger of falling flat sooner or later. So, we definitely have a lot of ground to cover, more so in light of very disturbing and disconcerting developments in recent times. While one can definitely deal with an identified enemy within and without the border, it is really difficult to nail those living amongst us and masquerading as citizens. There are some citizens who, intentionally or unintentionally, are weakening the evolution of nationalist tendencies in the country. The nationalist feeling, the so-called ‘we feeling’ that Benedict Anderson once visualised as a desideratum for his ‘imagined community’ to constitute a strong, well-bonded nation-state still appears elusive if we look around and cognize some of the developments in our civil society.

One of such disturbing developments is the alleged ‘racist behaviour’ among Indians against some of our fellow citizens. The fatal attack on Nido Tania, a young boy from Arunachal Pradesh in a South Delhi market in February this year resulting in his untimely death later, suspicious death of a young Manipuri woman in her flat in South Delhi’s Munirka, the assault on two Nagaland youths in Gurgaon and merciless beating of a Manipuri student leader in Bangalore for not speaking Kannada are some of the recent instances of violence against our fellow citizens from the North East.

The Central Government is said to have taken a series of measures to ensure safety of citizens from North Eastern states in New Delhi and elsewhere. They include regular police patrolling of colonies where people from North Eastern states live, starting exclusive helpline for them, race and gender sensitization programmes and speedy disposal of such cases. Today, we also have a Minister of State (Independent Charge) for the North East Region in former Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General V K Singh. The reinforced attention and concerted measures have been taken following the death of Nido Tania early this year to ensure the safety of people from the region in the National Capital Region.

Earlier in 2012, in an attempt to prevent racial discrimination against people from North East, Indian Government had asked all the states and union territories to book anyone who commits an act of atrocity or crime against people from the region under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. A predominant majority of people from the North East have the protection of this central legislation available to them by dint of their belonging to one or the other tribe as scheduled in the this Act. A person found guilty for non-bailable offences under this Act can be imprisoned for five years.

As per a study, an estimated two lakh people from the North East have migrated to Delhi between 2005 and 2013 as also have many times more people from the other provinces of India. According to the Union Home Ministry, crimes against the people from the North Eastern states have reportedly gone up by 270 per cent during the past three years. The Home Ministry data also confirm that crimes against people from the North Eastern states increased from 27 in 2011 to 73 in 2013. The crimes that witnessed the highest increase were in keeping with the national pattern though and inter alia included molestation, rape and hurt. While molestation increased by 177 per cent during the period, rape cases increased from one in 2011 to 17 in 2013.

 The data give credence to observations by the Government appointed M P Bezbaruah Committee that ‘people from the North Eastern states are racially discriminated against in Delhi’. The 11-member Committee, formed in the wake of the dastardly attack on Arunachal Pradesh student Nido Tania earlier this year, submitted its report to the Government recently where it held that 86 per cent of the North Eastern Indians living in Delhi have faced some sort of racial discrimination. The Committee in its report has stated that people from the North Eastern states faced more problems in Delhi than in other metropolitan cities such as Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata. It also said that over two-thirds of women from North-East had reported that they faced harassment and discrimination in Delhi.

The Committee in its 82-page report, inter alia, has recommended the institution of fast track courts and special police squads, integrating each and every aspect of the North East into the consciousness of people outside the region through educational interventions, increasing social media outreach and legal awareness campaigns, having earmarked residential facilities to address the accommodation problem faced by North East people, holding regular national and international events in the North East to create greater harmony and better understanding, making such offences with racial overtones into cognizable and non-bailable offences and expediting disposal of such cases.

Many citizens from the North-East India have complained that they have been stereotyped by such characterizations as ‘Chinky’, ‘Hakka’, ‘Nepali’, ‘Chinese’ and ‘Chow Mein’ by people in Delhi, with reference to their facial features, particularly the appearance of their eyes. For the distinct style including sartorial and tonsorial, tradition, culture, music, dance and more distinct facial features, they are said to become easy preys to outrageous remarks and alleged racial attacks. In 2007, the North East Support Centre and Helpline (NESC&H) was started with the determined object of increasing awareness of prejudices and attacks against people from the North East. The Centre (NESC&H) was launched with the express purpose to provide assistance to those from the North Eastern community who face various forms of alleged discrimination.

In the wake of back-to-back alleged racial attacks on people from North East in Delhi and elsewhere, the influential North East Students’ Organisation (NESO) has rightly demanded the curricular changes by inclusion of the history, geography and cultures of the people of North East in our school syllabi. ‘In major cities in India, people from the North East are often mistaken for foreigners by some people. They have to be educated. The only way we can educate them is by incorporating the history, geography and cultures of the people of North East in the school syllabi,’ NESO Chairman Samuel Jyrwa opined recently. ‘No law, no matter how stringent it is, can stop the racial attacks. The problem is in the mindset and it has to change. The problem is also about people’s ignorance that there is an India beyond West Bengal’, he said.

While the alleged racial discrimination against the North Eastern Indians is a reality, the fact remains that there have been similar reports or incidents of alleged xenophobic attacks and discrimination against Indian citizens of other regions in North East. It is a common knowledge that the migrant workers from Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa or Uttar Pradesh have been subject to a growing degree of xenophobia, racial discrimination, prejudices and violence in the North East. In 2000 and 2003, anti-Bihari violence in North-East led to the deaths of up to 200 people and reportedly generated around 10,000 internally displaced refugees. There have been a number of racial attacks against the Bihari community in North-East states like Assam, Manipur and Nagaland including massacres as carried out by the militant groups.

On 18^th Jan, 2014, five youths from Bihar were shot dead after being pulled out from a bus by the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) militants in Assam’s Kokrajhar district. Three others, also from Bihar, were injured in the same incident. In 2007, thousands of Hindi-speaking labourers fled from Assam after a series of massacres and bomb attacks. Overall, 98 non-locals were killed in Assam during 2007 disturbances. In March-April 2008, a banned Meitei outfit killed 16 non-locals in Manipur. Purbottar Hindustani Sammelan (PHS) has alleged that anti-social elements in Assam have been carrying out a continuous hate campaign against the Hindi speakers in the region. In 2009, altogether nine Hindi speakers were killed in Assam and Manipur, after the attackers set ablaze around 70 houses.

In 2010, Hindi, Bengali and Nepali speakers were killed by the NDFB militants in Assam. Maharashtra has similarly experienced hate campaigns from time to time against people from Hindi speaking states or from South India. But such alleged racial discrimination or harassment is not confined to Indians in states outside their own, but also against people from other nationalities including those from Africa either because of their colour or their features. As a society, we still have not learnt to treat with dignity some of our fellow citizens from amongst us as usually done with the downtrodden Dalits and women.

India is one of the top ten linguistically and culturally diverse countries. We have proudly cherished and celebrated our ‘unity in diversity’. Instead of the ‘Melting Pot Model’ which tries to forcibly amalgamate and assimilate all cultures and sub-cultures into one overarching identity, India has consciously opted for the ‘Salad Bowl Model’ to ensure that all cultures retain their distinct individuality while also being an inalienable part of the larger Indian civilisational entity. It is to this effect that the Constitution of India guarantees some basic fundamental rights to citizens including ‘prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth’ vide Article 15 or ‘protection of certain rights including the right to move freely throughout the territory of India and to reside and settle in any part of the territory of India’ vide Article 19.

But, as mentioned above, we are still to build a cohesive nation-state and our nation-building process is far from complete. Indian nationalism remains a building under construction. The so-called racial assaults on Indians in different parts of the country are more of a reflection of a sick mentality and criminal mindset than anything else. Don’t we see such instances of xenophobic and racial offences even in the liberal Western countries including the countries of North America and Europe which include USA, UK, Canada, France and Germany?

In a statement in Lok Sabha – Minister of State for Home, Kiren Rijiju rightly maintained that ‘it is not a fact that people from North Eastern states are being ill-treated in different states of India including Delhi’ and that attacks against them were ‘random’ in nature. One also feels that these discriminatory instances and experiences are more of aberrations and exceptions than part of a generalized mindset on the part of the people of the regions under news. More or less Indians are quite liberal and devoid of any habitual racial behaviour. While the above mentioned offences and crimes against North East people are a reality, it is also true that for every crime committed against the North East people in Delhi, similar and more number of crimes were committed against the people from the so-called mainland India if the data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) are to be believed.

Delhi not only has reported the highest rate of violent crimes in the country, but has also been found to be more prone to violence than any other state. The NCRB statistics say that around 54.4 per cent (10,733 to be precise) cases registered in Delhi are violent crimes. In 2013, Delhi reported 1,441 rapes making it the city with the highest number of rapes. The burglary incidents rose from 449 in 2013 to 4,447 till March, 2014. The motor vehicle theft cases rose from 2,893 in 2013 to 4447 in March, 2014. Reports of crimes against women in India such as rape, dowry deaths, molestation, kidnapping, sexual harassment, trafficking and cruelty by relatives increased by 26.7 per cent in 2013 as per NCRB statistics. There were, in all, 309,546 crimes against women reported to the police in 2013 against 244,270 in 2012. Police attribute the astronomical rise in these crimes to greater public awareness and better reporting/registration of crimes.

Most of the offences and crimes, as mentioned above, were never part of an institutionalised cultural outlook but manifestation of criminal behaviour on the part of some deviant Indians including militants as also borne out through investigations. A good number of these offences and crimes were later found to have been executed either with the criminal intention of looting or were instances of group clashes. As one can definitely not stigmatize the entire people of North East for violent and murderous attacks by militants on people from outside the region, likewise the people of Delhi or Maharashtra in general can’t be disgraced.

The alleged spurt in crimes against North East Indians has simultaneously seen a secular rise in crimes against all classes of citizens. If there has been racial stereotyping of North East Indians, there has been similar stereotyping for a person from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Bihar, Punjab, Gujarat, West Bengal, Rajasthan or Haryana as also typified by the jokes in circulation. So, it can’t be argued that only North East Indians have been targeted. The criminals have secularly targeted all classes of citizens.  The above incidents are deviant behaviour on part of a section of our society and should be dealt with strongly and swiftly. The various recommendations of the Bezbaruah Committee should also be given a serious thought for pre-empting recurrence of such episodes in future.

            Against this background, what are also needed, apart from strong policing and exemplary punitive measures against such offences, are more institutionalized inter-cultural exchanges and interactions, culture sensitization exercises including inclusion of specific chapters in school syllabus for inculcation of healthy, eclectic and cosmopolitan mindset and attitude vis-a-vis people from diverse cultures and regions, not to speak of encouraging more inter-caste, inter-regional and inter-faith marriages. We definitely need to outgrow these archaic, anachronistic, pathological, and abhorrent leftovers from our past and build a broader consensus to ensure the emergence of a more tolerant and progressive India from the womb of our nation-building process. The sooner we complete our odyssey from being the state-nation to a nation-state, the better.

*The views expressed are those of the author and don’t reflect that of the Government.

Smart Vs Decent Cities: Some Reflections

                                                              Dr. Saumitra Mohan

The latest Union budget has promised building 100 smart cities across the country for the neo middle class. The term ‘Smart City’ encompasses a vision of an urban lebensraum which is ecologically friendly, technologically integrated and meticulously planned. Such a city relies more on the use of information technology to improve overall efficiency. 

The smart cities are supposed to leverage data gathered from smart sensors through a smart grid to create a city which is livable, workable and sustainable. All the data collected from sensors - electricity, gas, water, traffic and other government analytics – are to be carefully compiled and integrated into a smart grid and then fed into computers with a focus on making the city as efficient as possible. This would allow the authorities to have real time information about these cities. This also allows the computers to attempt ‘perfect operations’, such as balancing demand and supply on electricty networks, synchronising traffic signals for peak-hour usages and for optimizing energy networks.

The Union Finance Minister, during his budget speech, rightly mentioned that ‘unless new cities are developed to accommodate the burgeoning number of peiople, the existing cities would soon become unlivable.’ He informed about the government’s plan to build satellite towns near existing urban areas on the smart city template, to upgrade existing mid-sized cities and to build settlements along industrial corridors. Rs 7,060 crores have primarily been earmarked for the purpose which amounts to a little over Rs. 70 crore per city. The Rs. 7,060 crore corpus is said to be merely the seed money to get the ‘Smart City’ project going. More funds have been promised to be allocated once things have moved forward.

While the ‘Smart City’ initiative is really laudable, cynics have pointed to the deplorable condition of Indian cities. They have questioned the ‘Smart City’ initiative when the state of affairs in our extant urban settlements continue to be pathetic. When we have failed to provide even the bare minimum urban amenities for the citizens, the ‘Smart City’ venture may turn out to be a pre-mature baby. They feel that instead of building futuristic cities, it would be more than advisable to first focus on ensuring the basic minimum services like proper disposal of solid and liquid waste, improvement of traffic and parking system, better sanitation and hygiene including well-planned drainage system, availability of safe potable water and most importantly, better inculcation of civic sense among the hoi polloi.

The fact remains that the state of these facilities remain pathetic even in our grade ‘A’ and ‘B’ cities including the metropolises, not to speak of medium and smaller cities. Clogged, overflowing drains and heaps of stinking garbage are an everyday sight. We still have not been able to ensure a proper drainage system in most of our cities. It is these clogged drains which generally give rise to massive water logging problem in our cities with massive possibilites of outbreak of water-borne diseases as they finally end up contaminating our water table due to uncontrolled leaching and seepage.

The practice of open urination and defecation in different parts of our cities does not help the situation. After all, who can forget the outbreak of plague in 1994 in Surat resulting in the deaths of many people. More than anything, Surat brought a negative publicity to the entire country which became a greater cause of concern. Surprisingly, the same Surat within a year turned out to be the cleanest cities in the country. And mind you, the authorities did not have to undertake any high-falutin initiatives but to focus on bare minimum things. This is what we need to do while visualizing our ‘Smart Cities’.

So, we emergently need to ensure a proper system of solid and lidquid waste management including house to house garbage collection, a planned network of well-connected drainage system, availability of a network of paid and free public conveniences, arrangements of scientific slaughter houses for ensuring availability of hygienically processed animal protein, clean streets as well as ensuring sale of covered food/street food stuffs. The latter should be coupled with a regime for selling the same by the hawkers e.g. making it mandatory for the street food vendors to sell their stuffs only wearing gloves and head-caps to preempt contamination. There should be a corresponding provision for enforcing these sanitation and hygiene norms among the people who should be penalized for violating the same as is the practise in most of the advanced countries. The wanton throwing of garbage at public places, open urination/defecation or spitting should be made punishable offences. Use of plastic bags for day-to-day purposes should be discouraged as far as possible and practicable as it is one of the important factors playing havoc with our drainage system.

Again, unavailability of parking spaces in our cities lead to private and public vehicles being parked on the roads itself, leading to traffic snarls and inconvenience. Hence, there is not only an urgent need to do a customized traffic planning for each city including provisioning of notified parking spaces but there is also a need to enforce traffic discipline among the people. The latter should include strict compliance with the traffic rules, zero tolerance for unauthorized parking or placement of household/shop stuffs on public space, roads, streets and footpaths. Construction of decent footpaths and public parks/community halls for recreational and utilitarian purposes should also be a priority for the authorities. The National Policy on Urban Street Vendors 2009 should be strictly enforced for bringing about a semblance of sanity on our roads and streets. This would also ensure the pedestrians’ right to safe and free movement. Availability of better and safer means of mass rapid transport system (MRTS) is also a desideraturm.

Given the increasing menace of extremism, it is high time that we have a strong system of city surveillance system to protect and secure the lives of our citizens, more so in light of increasing urban crimes and terror activities. Proper street lighting shall definitely prove quite helpful here. The entire towns should be duly divided in identifiable zones with public display of layout maps and proper road/street signages for citizens’ convenience and for better policing. Identification of water aquifers and identification of highly fire-prone areas should also be a priority with proper awareness regarding disaster management regime for all the stakeholders. Enforcement of building rules also demands serious attention of the municipal authorities. There should be an emergency planning for all the old and ramshackle buildings as well as fire-prone areas.

Besides, intelligent effort should be made for natural beautification of our cities. All the municipal authorities should come out with their citizen charters and ensure mandatory compliance with the same. Online deposition of municipal taxes and single window system for getting licenses/permits and various services should be made functional immediately. A strong public grievance system should be an inalienable part of the overall planning. While one knows that finances would be a major hurdle while trying to realise these goals, but with intelligent planning and smart execution, the municipal authorities can actually generate more revenues than they might need for the purpose. It is good to know that both the central and state governments are already synergizing their urban planning to be on the same page. If these concerns are factored into the ‘Smart City’ project, then we can actually ensure bare minimum services to our citizens in pursuance to a uniform template. Our ‘smart cities’ should first guarrantee bare minimum amenities for ensuring a decent standard of living to our citizens.

The views expressed here are personal and don’t reflect those of the Government.

Teleportation Could Soon Be A Reality

Saumitra Mohan

As a kid, I always enjoyed watching those TV Sci-fi serials ‘Star Trek’, ‘Doctor Who’ or ‘The Fly’ where the characters would travel millions of miles in a jiffy via teleportation. And today, when I ruminate over the various mundane problems, teleportation can just do the trick. Those traffic snarls, road rages, vehicular pollution or even the human desire to work from his/her home or visiting all the beautiful and exciting places in the world, I think teleportation does hold a key to many of our problems.

            And Lady Luck really seems to be smiling on us as scientists across the world are busy trying to make it a reality. Teleportation may be just as easy as scanning our body down to the subatomic level, annihilating all our favourite parts at point A and then transmitting all the scanned data to point B, where an intelligent machine reassembles us in a fraction of a second. Just visualise dematerializing from your drawing room and materializing the next moment in Los Angeles or Switzerland at will for a morning walk or commuting everyday to your office in Washington from the home in Lucknow or Kolkata.

A group of scientists at the California Institute of Technology is said to have successfully teleported a photon over a distance of one metre in 1998. They could transport an atom three metres with 100% accuracy. Another group in Australia bettered this in 2004, by teleporting a whole stream of photons, in the form of a laser beam, from one side of their laboratory to the other. They are said to have done it by using pairs of particles, through ‘quantum entanglement’ method.

Basically, two photons were so ‘entangled’ that they shared the same information. Thereafter, one of them was sent via cable to another point. Then, laser was used to change the data on one of the photons, which were copied to the other one immediately – due to the entanglement effect. The original photon was eventually destroyed, leaving only the copy behind. At the end, the original photon was gone, and only copy existed in another place.

The ‘quantum entanglement’ technology enables someone holding a particle to send, instantaneously, a chunk of information to someone else holding the other particle. Because of the weird quantum connection, the information goes from one person to the other without physically passing between them. Quantum teleportation is a process by which quantum information (e.g. the exact state of an atom or photon) can be transmitted exactly from one location to another, with the help of classical communication. Because it depends on classical communication, which can proceed no faster than the speed of light, it cannot be used for superluminal transportation.

For beaming a solid object from one to another place, we need to turn the solid matter of the particle (paper clip, person or whatever) into information which is then sent to a destination via electrical cable, or transmitting the same in the form of radio waves. Then, the signal is received and processed to create an exact copy at the other end. As now it is both here and there, we need to destroy the original object so it isn’t at the earlier location anymore; it’s here instead.

            As we know, all solid objects are made of atoms, and in order to copy or teleport an entire object, there is first the need to have all the information about every atom in the object. An ordinary steel paperclip contains around one thousand billion trillion iron and carbon atoms, structured into a simple, cage-like formation. The human body, however, contains around seven thousand trillion-trillion atoms – seven billion times more than a paperclip. There are multiple types of atom including hydrogen, oxygen, calcium, sulphur et al in a human body, and they are ordered in infinitely more complex ways than the simple, replicating cage-like structure of the paperclip.

Every atom in a human body is a set of data. The individual, like Captain Kirk, is nothing but a huge collection of those data sets. Extracting all the information from Captain Kirk’s body requires knowing the physical state of every atom, which would require total disintegration. Every time Kirk steps into the transporter, he is committing suicide and then getting reborn at the other end. Second, the amount of information required to re-create him is staggering as mentioned above. Nobody knows how to collect and transmit that much information. Slightest disturbance during the process of reassembling can ruin quantum entanglement thereby inherently scrambling the information. This only means suicide at one end without rebirth at the other. Processing so much information would be practically impossible. Any slip-up and we may end up with our leg sticking out of our head, or our organs jutting inside out.

Physicists like Charles Bennett suggest that even if we can’t do it now, teleporting an atom is theoretically possible. Star Trek-style ‘beaming up’ of people through space could become a reality sometime in near future. Nothing in the laws of physics fundamentally forbids the teleportation of large objects, including humans. If we believe that we are nothing more than a collection of atoms strung together in a particular way, then in principle it should be possible to teleport ourselves from one place to another. If realised for humans, this amazing technology would make it possible to travel vast distances without physically crossing the space between. Global transportation will become instantaneous as will be interplanetary travel.

As and when it happens, many of our problems would just disappear. We would no longer have to worry about increased vehicular pollution, or irritating traffic jams or an unfavourable posting away from our home. We can attend a meeting in Washington the very next moment after having breakfast at our Kolkata or Lucknow home; could be back home immediately after the meeting, have a cup of tea with the spouse and can together take a walk by the Nile thereafter in the evening. We could be back again for the family dinner in time at Kolkata or Lucknow or Jhumaritilaiya as the case may be. After all, who ever thought of having a face-to-face conversation with our near and dear ones physically sitting thousands of miles away? If human ingenuity could realise its dreams of flying or mobile telephony, teleportation should definitely not appear that far-fetched. Mind you, many of scientific inventions and discoveries were unimaginable at one point of time to our forebears.

NREGA IS DEAD. LONG LIVE NREGA

Saumitra Mohan

The Union Ministry of Rural Development Minister is said to be working on a proposal to bring about some far-reaching changes into the flagship rural employment scheme namely Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). One of the proposals aims to tilt the ratio of expenditure in favour of materials, which, as alleged by some, will likely result in contactors coming in through the backdoor. Increasing the material component of funds from 40 per cent to 49 per cent and decreasing the wage component accordingly, as proposed, would mean reliance on ‘ghost conractors’ with resultant corruption. Another fall-out of this development would be that the more vulnerable unskilled workers would lose out to the skilled ones in a contactor-based system.

 As things stand now, the contractors and use of machineries have been consciously barred in NREGS to keep it focused on its basic purpose of providing rural employment to the needy households while also focussing on some critical sectors like water conservation and harvesting, soil conservation, watershed development, drought-proofing, flood-proofing and undertaking social forestry in a big way. As a result, the countryside has not only seen creation of millions of working persondays for the rural households, but has also seen huge creation of permanent assets.

 MGNREGS by ensuring a socio-economic safety net through direct cash transfer to hundreds of thousands of rural households in India has worked wonders. This scheme is a much better mutant of a rural employment programme than many of its previous avatars given the latitude and scope it provides to the thousands of programme officers across the country. The scheme made significant progress in its outreach and effectiveness through the subsequent grafting of transparency and accountability norms. However, the carping Cassandras have been expressing serious doubts about the suggested moves to water down the obtaining norms including the universal entitlement of every agrestic household to rightfully demand work when needed.

It is believed that ‘Aadhaar’-based cash transfers to the rural poor and underprivileged would do a lot more to provide a safety net than bringing in contractors via backdoor as the same would mean less scope for manual work for the needy thereby compromising their ‘right to work’ as promised in the National Rural Employment Guarrantee Act (NREGA). Brought out through a parliamentary legislation, this social welfare Act envisages an economic safety net for the rural poor during the lean season by promising a hundred days’ work through a calendar year. Though there is nothing sacrosanct about any scheme including NREGA, but observers agree that MGNRES definitely was an improvement over all its predecessors.

If changes in society or technology allow a more effective way to deliver a particular social entitlement to the people, they should definitely be used. Even MGNREGS has used direct cash transfers to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries to minimise leakages. But the fact remains that the leakages have only been minimized and not completely eliminated. Jean Dreze, an advocate of NREGA, has rightly termed the transition to bank payments of NREGA wages as a ‘major breakthrough.’ Now, with the new ‘Jan Dhan Yojana’ promising a no-frill, zero-balance bank account for every Indian accompanied by a life insurance worth Rs. one lakh within a year, the MGNREGS wage transfers shall get a further impetus.

India’s poor have often been short-changed by the way our social welfare and subsidy programmes are structured. The most vulnerable section of society is at the mercy of bureaucratic despotism or lopsided power dynamics in thousands of Gram Panchayats where extension of a deserved government entitlement or benefit is often politically aligned. Hence, richer and relatively well-administered states make the most of these programmes by extracting a bigger share of the developmental pie even if the need is greater elsewhere. Cash transfer does provide a way to cleave through these societal dynamics. The evidence has been there for everyone to appreciate in NREGA when it transitioned from cash payment to bank accounts for paying the wages.

As per a report, total outgo towards subsidies in India is approximately 4.25 trillion rupees – around 4 per cent of our GDP. If leakages could actually be curtailed by plugging the extant programmatic loopholes to ensure a more efficient transfer of entitled wages to the intended beneficiaries, it will trigger radical social changes. Clinical targeting of various benefits including those of NREGA would mean huge multiplier effects for the rural economy. An efficient and effective delivery mechanism should allow the people to choose from a smorgasbord of socio-economic opportunities available through various government programmes and schemes instead of remaining passive objects of patronage. Once people are freed from the tyranny of whimsical discretions of the bureaucracy and political class, they will become more enlightened and empowered. This would reduce poverty, deepen democracy and improve the overall governance at all levels.

Overriding objections raised by senior officials and experts, the Rural Development Ministry is reported to have already ordered the restructuring of the job guarantee scheme (MGNREGS) which is likely to change the fundamentals of this flagship scheme. MGNREGS, as a demand-driven scheme, has provided work to one in three rural households during the last decade. Ministry documents obtained under the Right to Information Act show as to how arguments were advanced against diluting MGNREGS as the same run contrary to the ‘spirit of the Act’. They are said to have pointed to an assumed reduction of up to 40 per cent in persondays provided through MGNREGS as a result of reducing the wage component of the total funds allocated for the scheme. The objection was reportedly overruled as the proposed move is supposed to be ‘reflective of the view of the legislature’. The proposed change may soon become operational.

The RTI activists Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey and many others including economists, women’s’ activists, lawyers and former bureaucrats, as part of People’s Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG) have recently written to the Prime Minister protesting against attempts to dilute MGNREGS. The allegedly wilful starving of the MGNREGS by cutting down on release of funds to the states was described as a blatant attempt to abrogate a fundamental right of the people by economists like Prabhat Patnaik and Abhijit Sen.

Abhijit Sen, a former Planning Commission Member, also revealed that the creation of assets under MGNREGS was nine times more than the earlier Jawahar Rozgar Yojana although spending in both the schemes as a proportion of GDP was almost the same. The said RTI reply has revealed that the Union Rural Development Ministry owed a whopping Rs 6000 crores as an March 31, 2014, the bulk of which was delayed wages. The Ministry is alleged to be releasing funds in driblets and most of it is getting used up in settling pending wages and other liabilities. These liabilities have since further accumulated and increased thereby resulting in virtual stoppage of NREGA works across the country.

Many panchayati raj institution (PRI) members have pointed to the difficulties being faced by them as a result of choking of MGNREGS. The Gram Panchayats across the country have utilised NREGA funds to not only give work to rural poor as and when demanded, but also for improvement of rural infrastructures in the countryside thereby leading to overall improvement in the quality of life there, not to speak of the macroeconomic Keynesian implications of the same for the economy as a whole. There are many positive stories regarding NREGA creating opportunities for the rural poor to ensure basic entitlements for themselves and their children.

Activists of PAEG have strongly condemned the proposal regarding restricting MGNREGS to certain selected and short-listed regions where need for such job-guarantee works are needed more and have called it a death knell for the job guarantee scheme. Critics have already questioned the grounds and parameters for selecting these Blocks from across the country and have questioned the move because of its potential to compromise the ‘right to work’ as enshrined in the Constitution. The fact remains that as of now NREGA is a dead scheme. But given the grounds it has broken in rural employment over all its previous avatars, one would wish its continuance in one or the other form.

*The views expressed here are the personal views of the author and don’t reflect those of the government.

            Lateral Entry into Civil Service: A Timely Move

Saumitra Mohan

The federal democratic system in India since our independence has been governed by the elected Executive popularly known as the Council of Minister headed by the Prime Minister as primus inter pares. This elected Executive changes every quinquennium depending which political party gets first past the post at the hustings. The winner is bestowed the responsibility to run the country as per the arrangements specified in the Constitution of India. However, to ensure systemic continuity there remains in place an impersonal, permanent Executive aka the complex hierarchical bureaucratic structure, the famed steel-frame of India.

            Notwithstanding the eventful vicissitudes of fortune as Indian democracy has experienced over the years, if the country has seen peaceful transitions from one government to another, the credit, inter alia, has to go to India’s often-maligned steel-frame, howsoever rusted it is alleged to be. This stereotypical Weberian institution, predicated on rational and predictable rules, has duly and ably ensured the sustenance of the often doddering and toddling baby steps of Indian democracy. And Indian bureaucracy usually has its recruits selected through one of the toughest recruitment examinations in the world as conducted by the Union Public Service Commission. The Indian civil service remains pretty ensconced in the system to provide the critical support and facilitation to the elected Executive in governing the country.

However, lately this hoary leviathan (read bureaucracy) has been under fire. Trenchant vitriolic attacks have been mounted by the critics for its conservatism and status-quoist approach to the various protean governance issues as facing our polity. It has been argued that Indian civil service has been failing and flailing in its duty to transmogrify itself to suit the developmental demands of this young nation. The civil service, which has so far rendered yeoman service to the country through its thick and thin, suddenly appears a villain of the piece in the face of these criticisms.

One needs to appreciate that Indian bureaucracy or any bureaucracy for that matter is genetically programmed to be status-quoist as wilful chopping and changing with a governance system invites undesirable instability which could be simply dangerous for a complex, plural democracy like India with multilayered societal diversities. We can’t afford to ignore the examples from Latin America, Africa, East and South East Asia where such experiments have often resulted in balkanization and failure of the governance system in those countries.

            Given the multiple constraints in a complex, plural society like ours, Indian civil service has definitely delivered though observers feel that it has started showing signs of fatigue and does requires a face-lifting to customize it to suit the changing times. And it is with this in view that the extant Central government is toying with sundry ideas to effect the desired reforms in our civil service to bring it in synchrony with time. One such reform, which reportedly is on the anvil, is lateral entry into the Indian civil service. The Centre is believed to be actively working to institutionalise lateral entry from academia and the private sector into some senior government positions.

This is posited to be a long overdue reform with far-reaching implications. The critics feel that to change the way bureaucracy works, it has become imperative to move from a closed to a more open system for recruiting Indian’s future administrators. The bureaucratic glasnost is believed to be one of the prerequisites for enhancing quality of the quotidian governance in our country. In the past also, there have been suggestions by the government-constituted Expert Groups to institutionalise lateral entry into various critical positions requiring esoteric and specialized knowledge. But, such suggestions have often been pigeon-holed and not followed up in right earnest. However, with its commitment to good governance, the present federal government has been exploring various ways to enhance efficiency and effectiveness for better delivery of sundry public services and benefits. Ergo, in all likelihood, on this occasion, the government may see this important reform through to its logical end.

Lateral entry, though, has always existed in the chequered history of independent India’s civil services. Nandan Nilekeni, the former Infosys official was drafted to oversee the ‘Aadhaar’ scheme which has the potential to transform India’s social welfare sector, is an illustrious recent example. Another illustrious example is Raghuram Rajan, the present Governor of Reserve Bank of India, a position usually occupied by career bureaucrats. The practice, however, has been ad hoc in nature and marked by dilettantism. Given the strong umbilical linkage between governance and prosperity amid growing complexities in the society, Western countries like UK, USA, Australia, Holland and Belgium have already thrown open specific government positions to qualified personnel from all walks. It has been found to be a better way to attract apposite talents for the job.

A judicious combination of domain knowledge and relevant expertise is a critical requirement in governance. It is felt by many that these attributes are often not present in a cadre of generalists. Moreover, the increasing penchant for politically correct recruitment through reserved quotas also restricts scope for merit in critical areas requiring definite skills and competences. The second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) also envisaged a shift from a career-based approach to a post-based approach for the top tier of government jobs. ARC felt that civil servants ought to compete with domain experts from outside the regular civil service for senior positions.

An important dimension of this reform is to enable genuine competition by setting up an independent authority to supervise the proposed recruitment process. Without an independent authority with well-laid out norms, there is a chance that lateral entry may turn out to be an excuse for a back-door entry of the ‘spoils-system’ to recruit politically-aligned persons which will further subvert the system thereby defeating the whole purpose behind the move.

The proposed lateral process of recruitment is also believed to be a move to prise open the alleged stranglehold the IAS lobby has on key appointments. While the move is definitely welcome, it should be ensured that the same does not become a change for the sake of change. After all, a system which has delivered over the years can’t be jettisoned overnight. The baby should definitely not be thrown with the bathwater. One has to be very watchful while bringing in such far-reaching systemic changes. After all, Nandan Nilekeni has also been gasping for breath in the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIAI) with the ‘Aadhaar’ initiative going nowhere.

Such changes will only be skin-deep if other factors remain unaddressed including insulating the civil service from political interference. Besides, while allowing lateral entry, the members of Indian civil service should also be allowed to move out, do a stint in the private sector and come back to rejoin the civil service as per a pre-laid out protocol. Private sector enterprises also need to benefit from the rich and varied experiences that civil servants have. For sure, a change of this nature will not be easy as there is bound to be stiff resistance from within the babudom (read Indian civil service). The government, however, ought to push ahead with this paradigm shift in Indian governance as the national interest is always greater than the interest of a few though the proposal does need a more broad-based discussion with all the relevant stakeholders.

*The views expressed here are personal views of the author and don’t reflect those of the government.

NREGS: NEED FOR REINVIGORATION

Dr. Saumitra Mohan

With the change of guard at the Centre, lots of initiatives are being conceived. Newer schemes and programmes are being contemplated to bring about a positive turn-around in the socio-economic life of a common India. Many extant programmes are also being given a makeover.  The new enthusiasm and fresh thinking are definitely laudable and so far have been contagious given the positive vibes generated among the hoi polloi. All these initiatives, however, are yet to be tested for their efficacy in terms of practical implementation. In the interim, one particular national programme is definitely gasping for breath and that is National Rural Employment Guarrantee Scheme (NREGS).

NREGS was launched in the year 2005 pursuant to passage of the National Rural Employment Guarrantee Act (NREGA) in the parliament the same year during the first UPA (United Progressive Alliance) Government. The scheme was also launched to honour the Constitutional commitment as enshrined in the article 41 (Part IV relating to directive principles) of the Indian Constitution.

            The scheme took its time to gain momentum as it made a break from the erstwhile venal ‘paymaster system’ to bring about more transparency and efficiency in the delivery mechanism. The scheme, of all things, promised an assured 100 days’ work to a registered rural household within 15 days of the application though most implementing agencies found their ways with the mandatory unemployment allowance in case there was a delay in providing the demanded work within the statutory 15 days. Nevertheless, the scheme did ensure creation of immense asset creation in the countryside in terms of soil conservation, reclamation of cultivable land, massive social forestry works, enhanced irrigation capacities, flood protection works and hundreds of thousands of water bodies while also simultaneously ensuring redistribution of resources by way generation of millions and millions of working person-days. The latter definitely had a multiplier effect for the entire economy as the purchasing power generated in the countryside fuelled demands which had a cascading effect for the entire economy. Notwithstanding the sundry criticisms from all across including the alleged ingenuous leakages, the executing agencies used flexibilities of NREGA to provide demand-driven works to the rural populace as well as to fill up the infrastructural gaps as and when demanded.

            While almost all the states struggled with its labour budget, some states including Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal did strikingly well. In fact, West Bengal continues to be one of the national leaders in NREGS. However, this flagship scheme has definitely been in dire straits lately what with the clogged national funding channels and the protean reporting systems. The NREGS funding from the Centre has been far from smooth for some years now. To some observers, it often appeared that the NREGA administrators have wilfully been dilly dallying to delay fund allocations to the states. Surprisingly, notwithstanding the straitened financial position most states have been more than prompt to part with their share of the funds.

While to begin with, the wages were paid in cash which was rightly converted to wage payment directly to the beneficiaries through bank/post office accounts to check leakages. Though the opening of bank account was an uphill task given the penetration and manpower of these financial institutions, still almost all the executing agencies managed the same. The fund allocation was again made conditional upon submission of 60 per cent utilisation of the funds already allotted which was later hiked to 80 per cent. While the executing agencies were somehow managing these requirements, there came the system whereby the executing agencies were asked to reflect the work and financial status online through MIS (management of information system). This was another Sisyphean task given the poor availability of trained manpower and poor internet connectivity in the countryside. And all these were besides the requirements of 100 per cent social audit, GIS mapping and compulsory uploading of photographs of various stages of the schemes executed as well as regular financial and quality audit by the national and state monitors (read Ombudsmen). Indubitably, these were all good initiatives, aimed at bringing greater transparency and efficiency.

 However, with the Electronic Fund Management System (EFMS) coming into vogue, the wages are supposed to be directly credited by the state to the workers’ bank account. This was done with an aim to avoid payment delays by cutting layers. But before the state could do it, all the bank and postal accounts are supposed to be verified and frozen for ensuring correct crediting of the various payments. The latter has proved quite problematic due to poor manpower of these central financial institutions. But even where this is done, there have been considerable delays on the part of the banks and post offices to credit wages to the accounts of the households, resulting in huge resentment. Moreover, with the drying funds from the Centre, the states are finding it well nigh difficult to meet the fund requirements from the executing agencies, something which is negatively impacting the scheme.

            The workers have been revolting and agitating against delayed payment, not to speak of refusing to come forward to take up new works. Delayed payment and workers’ loss of faith in the executing agencies have adversely affected the scheme execution. The same also compromises the important tenets of NREGA namely provisioning of work within 15 days of application, assured 100 days’ work to a household in a year and payment of wages within fifteen days of the work. The recent directives relating to asset creation and for intensified execution in shortlisted blocks are welcome but the same definitely ought not to be at the expense of the right to work as promised by NREGA. Any compromise with the tenet of right to work, as enshrined in the Constitution of India, would be a regressive move.

One should not forget that NREGA has also been envisaged as a medium for optimal reallocation of values which has resulted in huge multiplier effect in the countryside by keeping the demand afloat in times of recession. Believe it or not, NREGA has definitely been one of the principal reasons for the rising wages of urban workers due to reduced emigration of rural workers to towns and cities due to facile availability of works in our boondocks. Effective wages have gone up all across resulting in enhanced pay-offs for the workers who have generally been short-changed. The demand-driven NREGS works have ensured availability of works during the lean season in the countryside. The same also had a salutary effect on the consolidation of family values and a redirection of focus on improvement of agrestic infrastructures is palpable.

            The observers feel that the policy makers should not throw the baby with the bathwater by trying to reinvent the wheel. NREGS is an offshoot of lots of thinking and is definitely an improvement on all its previous avatars like Food for Work Programme, Swarnjayanti Gram Rojgar Yojna, Jawahar Rojgar Yojna et al. The scheme has been quite progressive in the sense that it does not discriminate between a BPL and non-BPL families as the BPL list itself is not a foolproof list to select the beneficiaries from. The flexibility and independence NREGS promises to the executing agencies coupled with tighter transparency norms ensure better delivery than any other scheme has ever done. One feels the need for a broad-based discussion and consensus to consolidate the gains made through NREGS to make it further efficient and effective.

Dr. Saumitra Mohan is an IAS officer presently working as the District Magistrate, Burdwan.

National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme: How Effective?
Dr. Saumitra Mohan

A liberal welfare state tries to ensure equitable distribution of the development pie by resorting to myriad ways of redistributive allocation of values among its citizens. One of such measures include employment guarantee schemes for the toiling masses to ensure them work for minimum number of days on pre-decided subsistence wages. It is with this objective that the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) was launched in all the districts of this country. This follows on the back of various employment generation and food for work programmes including Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP), Community Development Programme (CDP) and Swarnajayanti  Jawahar Rojgar Yozna (SJRY). NREGS is actually predicated on the experiences and knowledge gained during implementation of all these previous schemes.

Since then, many observers have come up with suggestions and proposals for further fine-tuning of this flagship employment guarantee programme. This author read with interest an article recently which espoused the idea to provide employment subsidies to employers instead of providing guaranteed jobs through state-run employment generation programmes like the NREGS. The underlying assumption of the said proposition was the belief that such an approach would create jobs more efficiently and effectively than done by the present employment guarantee scheme.

Nobel Laureate Prof Edmund Phelps was quoted in the said write-up as saying, “Although such programmes have been substantial in Europe and the US, the working poor remain as marginalized as ever. Indeed, social spending has worsened the problem because it reduces work incentives and, thus, creates a culture of dependency and alienation from the commercial economy, undermining labour force participation, employability and employee loyalty.”

Proposing an alternative, Prof Phelps says, “The best remedy is a subsidy for low-wage employment, paid to employers for every full-time low wage worker they hire and calibrated to the employee’s wage cost to the firm. The higher the wage cost, the lower the subsidy, until it has tapered off to zero. With such wage subsidies, competitive forces would cause employers to hire more workers, and the resulting fall in unemployment would cause most of the subsidy to be paid out as direct or indirect labour compensation. People could benefit from the subsidy only by engaging in productive work.”

It is believed that the employment generated through this alternative scheme that Prof Phelps proposes, shall be an asset for the economy instead of a burden. Prof Bharat Jhunjhunwala of IIM, Bangalore believes that the present approach provides for taxes to be imposed mainly on urban business enterprises while money is spent in rural areas. The urban businesses have to bear the tax burden while the benefits are reaped by faraway villages. The business sector suffers on account of higher wage rates. The availability of some employment in the villages acts as a disincentive for workers to move from labour-surplus to labour-scarce areas because some employment is available locally under the Rojgar Guarantee Scheme. The author bemoans the fact that the business enterprises do not only have to pay higher taxes, but also have to pay higher wages. The author believes that if Prof Phelps’ suggestion is accepted then the taxes paid by businesses are recouped by receiving employment subsidies. The net outgo on wages shall be reduced due to subsidies thus received.

While the author’s suggestion for subsidy to labour-intensive industries does make some sense, but going whole hog for Prof Phelps’ proposed alternative definitely does not work, more so in the Indian context. To begin with the beginning, notwithstanding the supposed failure of the employment guarantee scheme in the developed countries, they still have not been able to replace the same with the ‘employment subsidy’ approach as advocated by many including Prof Phelps.

This is notwithstanding the fact that such employment guarantee schemes have been in force for over 50 years in most of these developed countries. Prof Phelps’ proposal is fraught with loopholes and complexities and prone to more corruption than one thinks. Moreover, it also does not promise to increase the job opportunities for the jobless as has been proved to be practicably possible by the present employment guarantee scheme, the many implementational hitches and glitches notwithstanding.

First and foremost problem with this approach is the moral hazard of passing off the extant employment in a firm to claim wage subsidies falsely and dishonestly. The employers led by petty and comprador bourgeoisie, instead of creating new employment, would try to ingenuously cheat the system for claiming the subsidies. After all, we don’t necessarily have a data-base of employed manpower of all such firms and industries. And such a data-base, even if created and maintained, may not be completely sacrosanct. Our experience tells us as to how such data-base is often tinkered and tampered with, often to the advantage of the high and mighty.

So, any system of working out compensatory subsidies for employers by establishing contrived linkages to employment generation is going to be very complex and is also likely to involve a lot of scope for discretion and subjectivity for the bureaucracy than the extant system. There is definitely no need to compensate big businesses for higher taxes levied on them as there are already multiple government schemes and incentives for performing enterprises and businesses. Moreover, even after paying those taxes, they are still left with decent profit margins to go shopping the world over for acquiring many of the renowned companies even in times of recession. Over the years, our tax and incentives structure have come to be comparable with the best in the world.

The assumed fear that such employment guarantee scheme actually encourages mediocrity and dependence on government is far from the truth. The present system is an incentive-based transparent system where a more productive worker can earn more if she/he gives more output and her/his wages shall correspondingly be higher compared to others whose output is less. The fear that villages unduly gain at the expense of towns is unwarranted, to say the least. The fact remains that towns are always better endowed in terms of basic services and facilities than those found in the villages. The employment guarantee scheme not only ensures assured employment for a household throughout the year (considering 100 days for each adult member of a family including the handicapped), it also envisages creation of basic infrastructures in the countryside.

It is believed that the progressive creation and availability of such infrastructures and employment opportunities in the countryside shall discourage people from migrating to the urban areas where basic infrastructures and services are already feeling pressure of increasing population. It shall also bridge the gap between rural and urban areas in terms of socio-economic indicators which are quite uneven at the moment. It is believed that wages in the urban areas shall go up consequent to reduced emigration and reduced availability of workers from the rural area. With less workers competing for more works, the real wages in urban areas shall go up which would continue to attract a minimal number of workers from the countryside as per changing demand and supply curve. The increased wages for urban workers shall be in keeping with the increased expenses required for urban living eventually enabling them to lead a better life than has been possible otherwise.

The apprehension that reduced availability of low wage workers shall either lead to shut-down of enterprises in the urban areas or relocation of many of them to the rural areas is also unfounded. At a time when we are talking of liberalization and globalization, we definitely should have no reason to think of the industries who shut down as a result of having to pay higher wages to the workers, more so when multiple government incentives are available. The enterprises need to learn to survive the cut-throat competition in a laissez faire market. They always have the option of shaping up or shipping out. Moreover, such an apprehension remains far-fetched as the pool of low wage workers shall still be larger in this unreasonably populous country despite local availability of guaranteed employment in the villages as there still are many push and pull factors which drive people to the urban areas. As such, there is no reason to panic.

Still, if some of them decide to move to low-wage areas which are likely to be under-developed, it is all the better as that would lead to infrastructural and capacity development of such areas and further improvement of quality of life there which eventually may see rise in labour costs in those areas as well. The cycle may go on till all parts of the country are more or less equitably developed. The government can actually think of giving incentives for relocation or establishment of new industries including labour-intensive ones in the backward and underdeveloped areas.

The belief that the current employment guarantee approach reduces labour force participation and employability of a worker is also not true. The experience from all over the country tells us that labour force participation in the economy has only increased as a result of operation of such a scheme and as a result, per capita income has also gone up. The multiplier effect of such a rise has been perceptible in the relatively high economic growth rates and other development indicators of our economy, recession notwithstanding. Besides, an employment guarantee scheme is also immune to the negative impacts of a recession. While the government shall have more reason to persist with such employment guarantee schemes in difficult times like recession, the employers, finding reduced demand and market for their products, would shut down overnight rendering all the workers under their dispensation jobless. It is again employment guarantee scheme which shall come to the rescue of such affected workers. Another advantage of such schemes is also the pump-priming of the local economy as the wages that workers earn as a consequence of operation of such a scheme on a huge scale shall keep the demands afloat to enable the local industries survive the aftermath of a debilitating recession.

Again, contrary to the belief, the employability of a worker is also not compromised because of in-built incentive structure in such employment guarantee schemes as the worker learns to be more hard working to earn higher wages by giving better output and by being more productive. The various training programmes given to people under the said scheme and under many other schemes do give the workers a choice to decide for themselves as to what do they intend to do. The dovetailing and convergence of many such cognate schemes and programmes further could yield better results with better value allocations among the hoi polloi. The cascading multiplier effects and resultant pay offs for the country as a whole is bound to be better and greater than commonly understood. The many success stories from the countryside regarding the positive effects of MGNREGA do bear out these beliefs.

The supposed acquisition of newer skills under the employment subsidy approach is quite problematic and is more at the level of assumption than a reality. The belief that the innocent, ignorant and gullible workers would get better jobs and acquire better skills as per their choice and aptitude moving from one industry to another for job-shopping is misplaced and fraught with danger. The danger emanates from the feared exploitation of workers by these enterprises who are likely to take advantage of their helplessness and non-possession of requisite skills by paying low wages and forcing them to work in unhygienic and undignified working conditions. The apprehension of fake claims for subsidies could also not be ruled out where industries and workers remain on paper just for siphoning the hard-earned public money.

Moreover, most of these enterprises are not likely to be enlightened enough to do a charity by employing an ignoramus and inexperienced worker to teach him/her newer skills to employ him/her later. However, the spirit of the proposal here is well taken and one does feel that the scope and ambit of such employment guarantee scheme needs to be further broadened and diversified. It could also be creatively fine-tuned to offer better wages and better opportunities to the people. But one has to give the scheme some time to evolve naturally and be more promising and better suited to the requirements of the employment-seeking workers.

After all, the Constitutional Right to Work, as envisaged in the fourth chapter of the Indian Constitution detailing directive principles of state policy, which took more than six decades to be translated into a reality, is likely to take some more time to be better customized to the requirements and needs of the target people. The very fact that NREGS, after being launched selectively in some districts of the country for guaranteed employment in the rural areas throughout the year, has now been extended to the entire country is itself a big achievement of sorts.

The belief that the alternative proposal is corruption-proof compared to the present one is also not true as already pointed out above because of the element of discretion and subjectivity inherent therein. The extant scheme because of the transparent system of job-card, fixed responsibility to provide jobs within fifteen days of receipt of an application demanding work or to pay unemployment allowance in case of failure of the same and the provision of social audit is much better placed to do the needful. The provision of job cards, public hanging of Muster Roll, public notice of details of an on-going works and Muster Rolls and a participatory social and financial audit of all the aspects of the schemes ensure better transparency and accountability than any other scheme. The Right to Information plugs the loopholes and fills the gaps, if any left anywhere.

Yes, one does feel that there is lot of scope for further improvement of the scheme. One is sure that as more feedback from the field is received and fed into the system to further fine-tune it, the extant scheme shall respond better to the tasks and objectives it is supposed to realize. To give some credit to Prof Phelps, his proposal can be tried on an experimental basis in selected areas as a pilot project rather than completely replacing the extant scheme. After all, it is too early to pronounce a judgement on the success and failure of the same. And in any case, an ingenuous and creative mix of the two conceptions rather than an exclusive reliance on any of the one can always be a better idea. One hopes that NREGS would evolve with time in keeping with the objective of realizing and ensuring growth with equity and justice.

Also, with the failure of the invincible capitalist system of economic development as represented by the Washington Consensus, it is all the more accepted and acknowledged that we can no longer depend on market forces for taking up social responsibilities. Rolling back the state completely is no longer an option. The state has to be there as a regulator and disciplining force with minimal responsibilities of maintaining law and order, dispensing justice and building an equitable society. So, the ‘employment subsidy’ approach, as dependent on private enterprises, is just not acceptable in preference to the employment guarantee approach as the same would only reinforce the Marxian apprehension about primitive accumulation of capital, thereby further pauperizing the proletariat. It shall only lead to the development of an underdevelopment if not checked and balanced through a judicious mix of well thought-out policies.

Now, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has been in operation for over eight years and is being implemented in all the districts of this country. NREGS has today turned out to be one of the most fascinating schemes launched by the State, generating lots of expectations because of the success story it has turned out to be.

Many executional problems and criticisms of certain aspects of the scheme notwithstanding, NREGS is the flagship scheme which has become the principal vehicle for extension of government benefits to the unemployed masses of this country. The changes in the quality of people’s life could be easily noticed in the countryside as also the massive infrastructures created under the scheme. The purchasing power generated has also created positive spin offs and multiplier effects for the economy as a whole.

However, the programme does require some structural and conceptual modifications to be better able to realize its objectives in the light of the experiences gained during its operation over the years. It is very well known that almost all the districts across the country have not been able to fully harness the scheme uniformally as the performance varies from state to state. Not only this, only a few of the districts have been able to realize the target of providing 100 days of employment to all the enlisted households even though financial allocations for the programme have seldom been a constraint.

It is argued that NREGS being a demand-driven scheme, the emphasis should be on provisioning of employment to those demanding work rather than on expenditure of fund allotted. But the fact remains that there are still hundreds of thousands of people in need of work in this country. It is felt that the implementing agencies i.e. district administration and various line departments could be and need to be more proactive in reaching out to the people needing work through better ‘information-education-awareness’ (IEC) programme. Many people still do not know that they can rightfully demand work under NREGA and shall be paid an ‘Unemployment Allowance’ in case of failure to provide the same within 15 days of demanding work, the latter mostly existing on paper.

A regional variation in terms of utilization of allotted amount has been observed as some states have availed of larger funds compared to many others. Many states including Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala have done exceedingly well in terms of fund utilization and a huge number of schemes have been executed in these states. The same has resulted in creation of massive purchasing power of the local people in those states, while many other states have also started catching up, West Bengal being one of them.

If still many people do not come forward to do work under NREGS, the reason for the same is said to be the availability of work at higher wages in the private sectors than the one provided under NREGS, resulting in less utilization of the allotted funds. This explanation may be tenable for the relatively developed states or for the urban areas even in the backward states, but definitely not for the rural and underdeveloped areas in states like Bihar, Jharkhand or Uttar Pradesh. These states definitely should have been able to utilize more money by providing more number of employment than they have been able to do so far.

One feels that as the Indian economy continues growing at a brisk pace, there shall be more people attracted to work at the more attractive market wage rates than the minimum wage ranging from 150 to 200 as provided under NREGS. Since no state has been able to provide hundred days of employment to all its citizens, there is definitely a need to take the required corrective measures to reach the said target.

In fact, at this stage of the scheme, it is advisable that we should get more daring and remove the ceiling of 100 days and make it a completely demand driven employment guarantee scheme to be available throughout the year for as many person-days as might be demanded. At least, the individual cap of 100 days per household should be removed. This would allow the individual district to go on providing work to individual household beyond 100 days’ ceiling. It would also enable them to utilize their own projected quota of man-days calculated against the number of existing household for that particular district.

With states unable to realize even 100 days of employment, the drain on government resources is not going to be something beyond its reach. This is more so when more work at higher wages are likely to be available in the private sector in times to come, given the way our economy seems to be performing. With India being one of the demographically young countries, more people are likely to be in the productive age groups meaning thereby they shall all be need to be provided with work. Hence, the need to modify the minimum number of mandays’ stipulations as envisaged in the Act at the moment. One hopes that the recent upward revision of this ceiling for the people belonging to SC/ST communities (150 days for them) shall help them improve the quality of their life by increasing their participation.

However, one also feels that this emphasis on 100 days per household should be qualified and modified with respect to the socio-economic conditions of the districts concerned. Often, it has been noticed that an overemphasis on completing 100 days per household often results in iniquitous and Pareto sub-optimal outcomes in terms of redistribution of limited economic resources and value allocations in a particular society. The overemphasis on high average persondays per household often leads to same families being given work again and again at the expense of other sections of the society. The district administration concerned is often encouraged to give more and more works to the same households to improve average employment (persondays) per household with other families being deprived. Hence, one feels that instead of high average persondays per household, the emphasis should be more on creation of more and more mandays in a district with more and more opportunities being given to more and more families. A district as huge as Burdwan in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal has as many as 10.5 lakh job card holders and as the district administration there has attempted giving works to almost every enlisted households, the average persondays per household has generally been quite low compared to many other smaller districts or other districts where relatively much lesser number of enlisted households have been engaged for work, thereby improving their average persondays per household. Here, the performance of Burdwan district would appear pathetic compared to any other district where the base itself is very small or where relatively much lesser number of households have been engaged for work. An emphasis on overall creation of persondays in the district shall not only be more equitable but shall also be a much better indicator of performance of works than the other way round.

Knowing that employment would be available for asking in the villages itself, the wage labourers will be less motivated to head towards the urban areas for seeking wage employment thereby reducing migration from village to cities. The same shall also reduce pressure on urban amenities and infrastructures. As a result, there is likely to be enough work left for the urban workers as also indicated in the discussion above. As there shall be less number of persons competing for work in the urban areas, it is likely that the urban wage labourers would get higher and more rewarding wages. It is also felt that the same reduces the need for the government to formulate any such wage employment guarantee programme for the urban workers even though the government is actually reportedly been contemplating introduction of an urban mutant of NREGS sooner than later.

The objective of the scheme includes not only provisioning of guaranteed employment in the rural areas to discourage rural-urban migration, but also to create gainful assets in the countryside. It is, therefore, advisable for the government to keep revising the minimum wages from time to time to reflect the market wages as also to diminish attraction of higher wage employment as might be available in the urban areas. If this does not happen, people would not feel encouraged to stay back in the villages to work for NREGA schemes thereby reducing the opportunities to create basic amenities and civic infrastructures in the rural areas.

It is felt by many that NREGS being a demand driven programme, people should be willing to do the work at the government approved rates, which is the minimum wage sufficient to sustain a household per day. If the people are getting work at higher wages elsewhere, they should go ahead and do it. This would result in saving of government money which can be better utilized for implementation of other ongoing welfare programmes run by the government including NREGS as well as for undertaking more material-intensive schemes. The unwholesome competition among states for higher NREGA fund utilization does not let this flagship employment guarantee programme remain a demand-driven one; in fact, it is run almost as a supply-driven programme. The cherry-picking of households and workers for providing NREGS works due to their proven or deemed proximity to the locally dominant political formation is also a major drawback of the scheme. There are many genuine job-seekers who don’t get NREGS works because they are not found to be politically suitable. Though they have the option of applying for the job and claiming unemployment allowance, the actual practice in the field is otherwise. The policymakers and implementers definitely need to think over this problem to fix the same.

During rainy season and other such busy seasons which may vary from state to state, people get higher wages in the rural areas itself thereby leaving very few volunteers for wage employment works in the countryside and the same results in less utilization of the NREGS money. But one would say that less or more utilization of NREGS allotment should not be a criterion to judge the success of the programme. Less utilization may also mean that there is less demand for such work in that particular area. This should actually be seen as a development indicator as that means people are getting work at higher wages elsewhere, thereby reducing dependence on government to provide such wage employment.

However, one does find it surprising when one sees that work demanded is significantly less even in those areas where people living below the poverty line are more than the usual and are still not demanding work under NREGA. It feels more surprising when such people keep sitting idle without doing any work, while plenty of opportunities could be created under NREGA for not only providing them with work, but also for creating permanent productive assets in the countryside resulting in enhancement of basic quality of life for the inhabitants.

So, it does feel that there has not been done enough ground work for creating awareness about the programme. It has been observed that people are still not aware of the fact that they can demand work under NREGA as a matter of their right. Most of them are still not aware of their right to demand unemployment allowance as a result of implementing agency’s failure to provide the work within the statutory fifteen days of the receipt of the petition demanding such a wage employment. The necessary allocations for such IEC exercises also remain unutilized in a good number of cases.

Surprisingly, unemployment allowance paid so far anywhere in the country is a very negligible amount of the total expenditure. The reason proffered for the same is provisioning of job within the statutory 15 days which is not the case. Actually, many implementing agencies have mastered the art of refusing unemployment allowance by not issuing the signed receipt for the applications demanding job. The payment of unemployment allowance is not only a charge on the local government, but also means the failure of the implementing agency to provide job within 15 days. In case of such a failure, the officers and staff members concerned are supposed to be penalized if responsibility could be fixed. Hence, the penchant for avoiding payment of unemployment allowances. There have reportedly been regular failures on the part of the many executing agencies to provide the demanded work within fifteen days, thereby defeating the very objective of NREGA. Not only this, no government official has yet been penalized for having failed to realize this programme objective notwithstanding there being the provision for the same.

Under NREGA, there is an in-built mechanism to check corruption and leakage of government money by means of better supervisory and monitoring arrangements. The same is supposed to be ensured by way of regular monitoring, field visits, muster roll checking by public, wide publicity of the details of the work being done or already done through an information board and other social auditing measures by the beneficiaries and other members of the society. The muster rolls are supposed to be publicly read to ward off corruption. The mechanism for a third party audit and Ombudsman also exist. However, the same is not being done regularly, thereby giving rise to suspicion of foul play. The provision of keeping an account of job demanded and provided through the specially designed individual job cards carrying photographs of the household members is also supposed to be a major anti-corruption tool. 

However, it was believed that these very arrangements were reasons for a general apathy initially among the programme implementing agencies to implement the scheme effectively as there was almost negligible scope for siphoning of government money as was available earlier during the previous wage employment schemes including Swarnjayanti Gram Rojgar Yojna (SGRY) days. 

But as they say, human ingenuity knows no bounds. The vested interests immediately discovered newer ways to sabotage the programme and got onto the gravy train. If some newspaper reports are to be believed, not only many fake job cards have come to notice of the monitors, but also there have been many reports where it has been found that implementing agencies or locally dominant factions have got a good number of job cards deposited in their custody and are using the same for nefarious purpose of minting money illegally. It has been reported that the vested interests pay the households a part of the wages for the work they never did and pocket the rest. The latter happily agree to the arrangement as the same helps them earn easy money without wiggling a finger. In many such cases, the work is reported to have been executed using heavy machines, something which is prohibited under the scheme.

Reports of preparation of cooked-up muster rolls without execution of any work have also come to notice, not to speak of many other known ways of making money. Here also, the wages are split between the households and vested interests. Sometimes, the entire wages are pocketed by the latter by way of an unholy alliance with the financial institutions like banks and post officers where the households’ accounts are maintained. Not only this, employment to job card holders is still being given more as an obligation than as a matter of right. It is complained that the site selection for the schemes is often politically motivated. Usually, those areas are alleged to be preferred for NREGA works which are under control of the locally dominant factions, and not those as are populated by the supporters other than the locally dominant factions. It has also been alleged that the locally dominant party often uses the scheme to oblige its supporters, thereby giving a miss to the workers who are opposition followers.

It has been alleged that by means of fake job-cards, the vested interests have ensured siphoning of government money by making false entries into the muster roll and the daily attendance sheet. It has also been complained that job cards have not been issued to all those who wanted it and applied for it, but only to those who are loyal to the locally dominant party/faction or could grease some palms. The practice of getting a cut out of the labour wages of workers has also come to the notice and has been reported in the press as also mentioned above. Hundreds of complaints/FIRs have also been lodged with the local police stations in all such known and established cases of fraud and chicanery. However, with regular monitoring, supervision and participatory social audit, the scope for such shenanigans have been reduced considerably.

Also, the wage is supposed to be paid as per the quantum of work done by the individual labourers. However, the same has been noticed to be paid at a flat rate irrespective of the efficiency or work quantum standards in some of the cases, thereby rewarding a hare and a tortoise equally, something which goes against the purported objective of the scheme. The initial idea was that those working harder with higher productivity should be able to earn higher wages under the scheme. The actual practice, however, is something different. At many of the places, officials have pointed to the practical constraint of continuing with the ‘flat rate wage payment’ as differentiated payment creates discontentment among the workers, often leading to law and order problems in the field. Besides, it is also felt that the work benchmarks should be relaxed for the more aged workers (read senior citizens) and for the women.

Again, the workers have often unfairly refused to work beyond a few hours or at the pre-determined wage on various pretexts. This is simply because NREGA being a government scheme, they would not like to work harder and would like to just have their wages without putting in the requisite labour for a requisite output. At least, that is what has come to be heard by the implementing agencies at some places. But thankfully such instances are only few and far between. Another problem noticed in the implementation of NREGA is the fund crunch often faced by the administration from time to time. Even though NREGA is supposed to be a demand driven scheme, it has invariably been noticed that the fund flow has not been smooth for various factors, thereby hampering the effective execution of this rights-based scheme. So, governments at all levels should ensure that the availability of funds does not become a constraint in the execution of the programme.

The stipulation for timely payment of wages (within 15 days) is, ergo, observed more in breach and the principal reason reported by the executing agencies is the erratic and irregular flow of funds from New Delhi, something which is not at all advisable. The already precarious economic condition of NREGA households and job-card holders becomes only worse as a result thereof. Hence, the need to ensure timely and regular flow of NREGA funds to the executing agencies through the state governments.

Also, the basic work site amenities as are supposed to be there as per the programme guideline are often not found to be available. The provisioning of a crèche for children of working women, provisioning of the first aid boxes or potable water at the work sites are still not seen at most of the places. If at all such amenities are provided, they are only to comply with the guideline rather than to fulfill the real spirit behind the provision. The stock argument proffered is that people feel that employment created through such works are less strenuous and villagers object to the fact that some people can earn their wages without putting in any hard labour. What they fail to realize is that such works can accommodate not only the physically handicapped people, but the same works can be rotated among the beneficiaries, if the handicapped or such other people are not readily available.

The signboard giving details of the ongoing or completed NREGA works is also found missing at many of the sites and is often put up without much details. However, the absence of the information board giving scheme details says something about the intentions of the implementing agencies, the motives being pre-empting people to question the quality and quantity of the works done. But such an argument does not stand in this age of Right to Information when any and every information can be accessed by way of the rights created under the said Act.

Several suggestions are being made to modify and improve NREGA further. It is felt by many that the material-wage ratio of 40-60 should be hiked to be 50-50 and this ceiling should be flexible enough to be applicable only at the state level so as to make allowance for taking up bigger and better schemes. The conditional use of machineries should be allowed and made more flexible than it is admissible now though the same should be explicitly linked to facilitating the works and without compromising the generation of more person-days under NREGA.

Again, individual benefit schemes (IBS) have been allowed for weaker sections/marginal/small farmers for the permissible schemes under NREGA. Such schemes include conversion of wasteland/uncultivable/undulating land into cultivable land, roof-top water harvesting structures, construction of dug-wells, soil conservation, excavation of pond/water harvesting structures, social forestry schemes, watershed development schemes, animal shed, sanitary toilets, grain-threshing concrete floors, construction of irrigation channels and some other schemes. 

Many states have done exceedingly well while many other states have a long way to go on this count. One feels that there is a need to move methodically with regards to the implementation of IBS under NREGA as the same shall not only result in creation of more person-days in the under/undeveloped areas, but shall also create productive assets in the countryside. The same is likely to have immense multiplier effects. Timely identification of beneficiaries and creation of model scheme banks shall go a long way.

Again, there is a lot of scope for convergence or dove-tailing of NREGS with other schemes/programmes implemented by the line departments. If converged with other cognate schemes, the same shall help not only in more employment generation but it shall also result in improvement in the quality of schemes executed as the pool of resources available shall increase manifold through such convergence.

Convergence with Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), as allowed recently, shall be another area requiring attention of the implementing agencies. As is known, TSC is one of the flagship schemes of the Government. However, the same has not been in a very good shape in many parts of the country. Even at the places where sanitary toilets have been constructed, they are not being used by the beneficiaries for different reasons including the one relating to the quality of the toilet constructed if feedback from the beneficiaries are to be relied upon. The main problem against the extant model is need of lot of water for flushing the night-soil which becomes more acute in the water-deficient areas. As the new models envisage use of ceramic pan in stead of a concrete one, water requirement could be greatly reduced.

Now that we are undertaking several individual benefit schemes (IBS) under schemes like NREGA, one feels that the convergence between the two (i.e. NREGA and TSC) can do wonders for both the development programmes, particularly TSC. Under the proposed convergence programme, people could be encouraged to contribute their share (Rs. 900/BPL household and Rs. 9100 scheme subsidy under NREGA/TSC), thereby greatly encouraging people to opt for construction of sanitary toilets in their premises. Such models are not only more durable, they shall also need less water for flushing the night-soil. It is hoped that with proper IEC (Information, Education and Communication) campaign, the said convergence can do a world of good to our sanitation programme. 

We are hopeful that this model of sanitary toilets when integrated with the IBS under NREGA has the possibility of becoming quite popular and could realize the objectives of the total sanitation campaign. This small piece of change to be effected through NREGA funds could go a long way in ensuring better health and hygiene in our countryside, not to speak of the possibility of unleashing immense opportunities for employment generation. And as the IBS schemes are also available to the marginal and small farmers, almost anyone and everyone can avail the benefits of sanitary toilets being provided under NREGA, thereby revolutionizing health and hygiene in the countryside.

The administration of NREGA can improve further with a dedicated Programme Management Unit (envisaged, but still not done at many places) at all the levels including districts, blocks and Gram Panchayats. There is also a need for proper utilization of the six per cent contingency provided for provisioning of the requisite infrastructures and manpower required for better programme implementation. Fund flow to various programme implementing agencies (PIAs) has to improve with proper coordination among the District Programme Management Unit, banks, post offices and all other stake-holders concerned. 

Newer NREGA schemes should be taken up. Such schemes may include solid waste management, more individual benefit schemes, drainage system, construction of model houses (of specific value a la IAY), sanitary toilets, kitchen gardens, rural hats, repair and maintenance of government building including construction of boundary walls. Self help groups (SHGs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) need to be involved in a huge way in various ways in implementations of the schemes including monitoring, work measurement and social auditing of the scheme.

Approved and vetted shelf of schemes should be ready for better and faster implementation of the NREGA schemes. Also, there is a need for the proper planning for all the seasons of the year. Still, the focus seems to be on expenditure of maximum money under NREGA but as it is a demand-driven scheme, the focus should be to generate employment for the unemployed and under-employed to prevent them from emigrating to the urban areas while also creating valuable assets in the countryside.

If NREGA has to be successful in realizing its programme objectives, then these concerns and problems, as mentioned above, need to be addressed sooner rather than later. One just hopes that with regular monitoring, social auditing and proper accounting coupled with some positive changes required in the light of the experiences gained during its operation over the years, NREGA can really become an effective answer to many of the problems for India’s poor masses.