|
Open Forum
NREG Scheme Affect
SOCIAL AUDIT MOST CRUCIAL
By T.D. Jagadesan
New Delhi, October 02, 2008
The critics notwithstanding, the two-year-old National
Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has widely been
acknowledged as a pioneering legislation. However, it is seen
essentially as a wage employment programme. The NREGA is
indeed the first tangible commitment to the poor that they can
expect to earn a living wage without loss of dignity, and
demand this as a right.
It so happens that the guarantee of 100 days of employment is
possibly the most important feature of the Act. Never before
has there been an initiative of this nature and magnitude in
development history. Direct benefits from wages have been of
enormous importance to poor households.
However, the National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG) scheme
is much more, and its potential is truly phenomenal. The
unique character of the NREGA lies in the remarkable
opportunities it opens to transform the development scenario
in the country. This is beginning to be revealed in the two
years that it has been in operation. The irony is that this is
yet to be recognized or understood even in Government. Will
the promise then, be fulfilled?
Perhaps for the first time in a government programme,
transparency and accountability was seen to be possible as a
participatory process. This is the direct outcome of social
audits, the conduct of which has been mandated not only in the
Right to Information (RTI) Act, but also in the NREGA itself.
Such social audits have thrown up incredible instances where
corrupt officials in village after village have returned the
money which they misappropriated.
Further, partnerships between the administration and the
community have worked and were found to have been feasible.
Officials, NGOs, village groups and wage labourers have got
together in several States to ensure the effective
implementation of the programme – a big change from the feudal
and mai baap syndrome which continued to persist after the
British left. This brings us closer to the objective of
decentralized governance.
An encouraging development also is that it has actually been
possible to locate, and associate “partners” in most, or at
any rate, in many districts. In fact, several groups, NGOs and
activists have found in the NREGA a vehicle for meaningful
interventions – to facilitate the coming together of the rural
poor to organize themselves for wage employment. This has
enhanced the capacities of community organizations and NGOs to
work with government in development schemes.
A particular significance of the NREG scheme is that many of
the assets created under the programme can directly benefit
the poor. This is because the Act specifies that individual
works are permitted, but only for the benefit of households
below the poverty line and from the scheduled caste and tribe
communities. Just as the horticulture revolution under the
Employment Guarantee Scheme of Maharashtra benefited the
better off farmers in the 1990s, so also the NREG scheme can
make possible a productivity revolution on the lands of the
poor.
Perhaps the most important of all, and of lasting impact, is
that a process for the empowerment of the poor is emerging
around the NREGA. This process has commenced in several parts
of the country where poor households have been able to assert
themselves and demand the payment of the minimum wage, bargain
for higher wages, seek and obtain the unemployment allowance
from a reluctant and unwilling administration.
Clearly, the employment guarantee has initiated changes which
are qualitatively different from any of the past; these could
define a new paradigm in development. They have of course, not
been widespread, and the impact also has been varied and
uneven. However, this is just the second year and even so a
difference is being made. The challenge now is how best to
proceed to achieve the promise of the NREGA.
The social audit has emerged as perhaps the most powerful
instrument for transparency and accountability in government
programmes; it needs to be conducted everywhere. Regrettably,
recently the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek
Singh Ahluwalia was reported to have said that the NREG scheme
has failed in virtually half the country and that it has not
delivered jobs to those who need them the most.
According to statistics available with the Commission the
scheme has failed miserably in Orissa, Bihar, West Bengal,
Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and even Modi’s Gujarat — States
that account for roughly 250 Lok Sabha seats. The reason:
fudging of the numbers of beneficiaries. However, the report
cards were relatively better in BJP-ruled States such as
Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
So far only one State, Andhra Pradesh, has been pro-active and
has taken the social audit initiative to mobilize the State
machinery. Specifically, the administration has been made
responsible to obtain the records of the scheme.
A similar path should be followed by all States; otherwise, as
has happened in Rajasthan and elsewhere, the social audit
process will be resisted and could even be neutralized. There
was resistance, initially in Andhra Pradesh as well, because,
on several occasions, the administration itself was exposed.
However, since the initiative had come from Government, there
was no confrontation or obstruction by the officials.
Andhra Pradesh, however, has been an exception, and no State
seems willing to act on the social audit provision. It is
perhaps not realistic to expect other States to issue similar
instructions, and a directive from the Union Government will
be necessary. Further, the release of funds could be linked
with the performance of States in the conduct of social audit.
Such conditions for release are not uncommon. Simple and
effective.. ---INFA
(Copyright India News & Feature Alliance)
E-Mail :
newseditor@sarkaritel.com |
