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.
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