What is the buzz about it after four years? Is it really one of the successful Acts passed by the Government? Has it truly worked for the rural folks and the farmers? Has it accomplished to alleviate poverty?
Among the slew of policies introduced by the government to stimulate employment and create sustainable livelihoods; NREGA is one of them. There is a surge in the discussions, articles published and debates reviewing the success of this Act, after lapse of four years of its passing in the Parliament.
Introduction:
The Minister of Rural Development, Sri, C.P. Joshi during the 2005 term of the UPA government, under the aegis of Ministry of Rural Development passed the bill in the Parliament creating the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and raising a hope of continuous employment all over India (especially in the rural). Since then people have looked forward for the benefits of this legislative move.
It emerged out of the memorandum of recommendations submitted by the members of Wada Na Todo Abhiyan to the Ministry of Rural Development. This was primarily implemented to bring in transparency in the wealth distribution system executed by various government policies.
The primary objectives are as follows (Source: Ministry of Rural Development):
Enhance livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.
A question would arise whether there is no other policy that has been introduced in the past which focuses on this objective. The answer is “Yes, there have been many steps taken in the past to create perpetual opportunities for employment in the rural. This Act is unique because, the objectives also added the term transparency which is hidden in the not so called bureaucratic mannerisms of the men-in-charge.
This step taken by the Government has been appreciated by many critics. From a perspective to understand this subject better I have consolidated a few instances and experiences of the farmers to showcase the advantages of the Act and in how many ways it has backfired.
NREGA, at the union level has insisted on employing all the people willing to work for daily wages, especially for the manual work. Farmers of all classes of society looked for transparency and accountability provisions as community work and consolidated land development was replaced by the individual land holdings.
UPA Government also claims that this scheme provides employment for 100 days for a particular salary irrespective of which social class one belongs to.
No matter how much the term “transparency” has been glorified, we have instances like the social audit at Bhilwara proving the failure of this scheme. Thanks to NGOs which participated in this audit, tracing a mis-match in the accounts amounting over 1 crore rupees. Many other village administrators belonging to Rajasthan were questioned in this matter.
NREGA has not been a complete failure but, has kept up to the expectations when we hear the success story of Parsa Par gram panchayat. Reports claim that in this project over 13,000 people were provided employment.
We have to wait and see how far this Scheme will help in alleviating poverty and making Vision 2020 a reality.
http://www.rural.nic.in/publication/April2008/gb_eng_april08.pdf
http://southasia.oneworld.net/Article/nrega-must-create-sustainable-livelihood-say-indian-experts
http://www.indg.in/rural-energy/rural-energy-home-page/view?set_language=en
http://www.livemint.com/2009/06/14173727/India-to-pitch-for-policies-to.html
Transparency http://www.livemint.com/2009/08/17214837/Transparency-is-one-of-the-mos.html
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