Section III - National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 and its Problems
NATIONAL RURAL EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE ACT, 2005
This is one of the very few progressive, pro-people legislations alongwith the Right to Information Act 2005 that the present UPA Government has brought in. Inspite of the pressures by the Globalised sections of the present government who consider this as "Dole" and "unsustainable" whereas dont think that giving customs duty concessions to the industry, setting up of Special economic Zones (SEZs) for the"exporters", free allotment of land to "Multispeciality private corporate hospitals" as a Dole. But because of the pressure brought in by the Left parties inside and outside of the Parliament and because of the tremendous work done by the "Right to Food" camapaign within this country, the government had to finally listen to the popular will and bring in this act.
The details of the Act can be found at http://nrega.nic.in
The main difference this time around is that they have not put any criteria of BPL for enrolling oneself. Also for the timebeing specific districts have been identified for this but if you go to the site on the right side they have mentioned by the time of next year they would be extending the same to the whole of the Country
But there are specific problems from the previous Employment Guarantee Assistance Schemes(EGA) which are repeated into this as well. All those Rozgar Yojanas like the Jawahar Rozgar Yojanas and its brothers and sisters were not effective because of the specific problems. Some of them are:
1. Most of the work identified are civil or construction related. Since civil construction like a bus shelter or a complex in the name of MLA means big cuts and big money from the contractors and also something tangible that can stay in the name of the MLA and he can be "seen" to be doing "developmental" work
2. Most of these works were subcontracted out, the contractors would use Heavy Machinery like JCB defeating the whole purpose of the Rozgar Yojanas
3. Since it used to be only civil construction and other such activities (drainage systems, desilting etc., ) with which the labourers have no sense of belonging or ownership or stake in this, any labour was the same for them and the more the delay in executing the same, the more the labour got from EGA and hence the works used to not get completed on time
4. Since there is no challenge, no new learning, no capacity building or asset creation for the labourers, they treat this as just labour and efficiency comes down
5. Also there is the cultural angle. If we look at the rural unemployed today, they are also the farmers who have done distress selling of their lands and then become landless and unemployed and if they were to be asked to do the drainage work or the hard labour of construction they wouldnt be wanting to do in their own village as it would be below their dignity to do the same. It wouldn't matter that the same person migrated to city and worked as a peon as it would be an "izzatwali' job. This resulted in under utilisation of the funds. For the same reason that there is large scale migration to the cities/ towns by the male folk and the women had to do all these civil work which is considered "unsuitable" for them the utilisation goes further down. If you were to see the present NREGA site there is a news item which says that 7 M JOB CARDS ISSUED, BUT 4.3 M MAKE IT ( http://rural.nic.in/news/0308062006.pdf) precisely for some of the above reasons
6. Even the little agricultural related work that gets done is on so-called "watershed programs" whose results cant be seen for nearly 10-15 yrs and even the results that occur are again beneficial to the land holding farmer!!
7. In addition to the above the Rozgar Yojanas were divided and compartmentalised into SC/ST beneficiaries scheme, watershed scheme, etc., and also the total money is being split by the number of the ward members of the Panchayat (12-13) resulting in fragmented funding.
8. If you look at the guidelines document it again specifies some of the above mentioned works only (http://nrega.nic.in/Nrega_guidelines.pdf) and nothing has been learnt from the previous mistakes. But luckily this time the civil society is much more vibrant and upto the challenge and mobilising the community on the correct utilisation of the NREGA from a Rights Approach with Rajasthan topping the list thanks to the pioneering work that MKSS and others are doing in combining RTI and NREGA with no less than the most Globalised Citizen of the country Montek Singh Ahluwalia grudgingly acknowledging that "YOJANAO KE KIYANVAYAN MEIN RAJASTHAN AVVAL:MONTEK" ( http://rural.nic.in/news/0325072006.pdf).
THIS PROGRAM ENVISAGED IS TO UTILISE THE NREGA TO BUILD CAPACITIES OF THE LANDLESS LABOURERS IN AGRICULTURE AND ALLIED SERVICES AND AT THE SAME TIME CREATE ENTITLEMENTS FOR THEM SO THAT THEY CAN HAVE A STAKE AND OWNERSHIP.
This is one of the very few progressive, pro-people legislations alongwith the Right to Information Act 2005 that the present UPA Government has brought in. Inspite of the pressures by the Globalised sections of the present government who consider this as "Dole" and "unsustainable" whereas dont think that giving customs duty concessions to the industry, setting up of Special economic Zones (SEZs) for the"exporters", free allotment of land to "Multispeciality private corporate hospitals" as a Dole. But because of the pressure brought in by the Left parties inside and outside of the Parliament and because of the tremendous work done by the "Right to Food" camapaign within this country, the government had to finally listen to the popular will and bring in this act.
The details of the Act can be found at http://nrega.nic.in
The main difference this time around is that they have not put any criteria of BPL for enrolling oneself. Also for the timebeing specific districts have been identified for this but if you go to the site on the right side they have mentioned by the time of next year they would be extending the same to the whole of the Country
But there are specific problems from the previous Employment Guarantee Assistance Schemes(EGA) which are repeated into this as well. All those Rozgar Yojanas like the Jawahar Rozgar Yojanas and its brothers and sisters were not effective because of the specific problems. Some of them are:
1. Most of the work identified are civil or construction related. Since civil construction like a bus shelter or a complex in the name of MLA means big cuts and big money from the contractors and also something tangible that can stay in the name of the MLA and he can be "seen" to be doing "developmental" work
2. Most of these works were subcontracted out, the contractors would use Heavy Machinery like JCB defeating the whole purpose of the Rozgar Yojanas
3. Since it used to be only civil construction and other such activities (drainage systems, desilting etc., ) with which the labourers have no sense of belonging or ownership or stake in this, any labour was the same for them and the more the delay in executing the same, the more the labour got from EGA and hence the works used to not get completed on time
4. Since there is no challenge, no new learning, no capacity building or asset creation for the labourers, they treat this as just labour and efficiency comes down
5. Also there is the cultural angle. If we look at the rural unemployed today, they are also the farmers who have done distress selling of their lands and then become landless and unemployed and if they were to be asked to do the drainage work or the hard labour of construction they wouldnt be wanting to do in their own village as it would be below their dignity to do the same. It wouldn't matter that the same person migrated to city and worked as a peon as it would be an "izzatwali' job. This resulted in under utilisation of the funds. For the same reason that there is large scale migration to the cities/ towns by the male folk and the women had to do all these civil work which is considered "unsuitable" for them the utilisation goes further down. If you were to see the present NREGA site there is a news item which says that 7 M JOB CARDS ISSUED, BUT 4.3 M MAKE IT ( http://rural.nic.in/news/0308062006.pdf) precisely for some of the above reasons
6. Even the little agricultural related work that gets done is on so-called "watershed programs" whose results cant be seen for nearly 10-15 yrs and even the results that occur are again beneficial to the land holding farmer!!
7. In addition to the above the Rozgar Yojanas were divided and compartmentalised into SC/ST beneficiaries scheme, watershed scheme, etc., and also the total money is being split by the number of the ward members of the Panchayat (12-13) resulting in fragmented funding.
8. If you look at the guidelines document it again specifies some of the above mentioned works only (http://nrega.nic.in/Nrega_guidelines.pdf) and nothing has been learnt from the previous mistakes. But luckily this time the civil society is much more vibrant and upto the challenge and mobilising the community on the correct utilisation of the NREGA from a Rights Approach with Rajasthan topping the list thanks to the pioneering work that MKSS and others are doing in combining RTI and NREGA with no less than the most Globalised Citizen of the country Montek Singh Ahluwalia grudgingly acknowledging that "YOJANAO KE KIYANVAYAN MEIN RAJASTHAN AVVAL:MONTEK" ( http://rural.nic.in/news/0325072006.pdf).
THIS PROGRAM ENVISAGED IS TO UTILISE THE NREGA TO BUILD CAPACITIES OF THE LANDLESS LABOURERS IN AGRICULTURE AND ALLIED SERVICES AND AT THE SAME TIME CREATE ENTITLEMENTS FOR THEM SO THAT THEY CAN HAVE A STAKE AND OWNERSHIP.
posted by Prasanna Saligram at 7:29 AM
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