8/8/2019 Times of India - 14 Nov 2010 - Page 8

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SHORTCHANGEDThe radical social vision of NREGA, the showpiece legislationthat won an election, is being subverted, says Manoj Mitta

For Sonia Gandhi, the change could nothave been more dramatic. Just last year,her contribution in pushing for the Ma-hatma Gandhi National Rural Employ-ment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) washailed as the single largest reason for the

fresh mandate received by a government avowed-ly dedicated to the aam aadmi.Yet, last week,Gand-hi, as chairperson of the National Advisory Coun-cil (NAC) was reduced to lodging a complaint withPrime Minister Manmohan Singh against a majordilution of the same showpiece legislation.

The provocation for Sonias letter pertained toa growing sense of disquiet in civil society. This isessentially over the anomaly of labourers being

paid less than minimum wages the lowest pre-scribed rate for bare subsistence in as many as19 states. This anomaly arose out of the Centresnotification two years ago fixing the wage rateat Rs 100 per day. The Centre, which bears almostthe entire burden of MGNREGA,is entrusted withan unduly wide discretionary power for fixing thewage rate. In her letter to the Prime Minister, So-nia conveyed the NACs view that the Centre can-not encroach on the right of workers to be paid

minimum wages as determined from time to timeby their respective state governments.Sonias intervention followed similar concerns

raised with the PM by chief ministers of two ofthe affected states, K Rosaiah of Andhra Pradeshand Ashok Gehlot of Rajasthan. Both are inci-dentally Congress chief ministers. This politicalreaction came after a stay order by the AndhraPradesh high court on the Centres notification onthe wage rate, essentially on the grounds that itviolated the Minimum Wages Act 1948. When theCentre persisted with its policy of freezing thewage rate at Rs 100 despite the stay order, the highcourt initiated contempt proceedings against theUnion and AP governments.

Meanwhile, in a rare initiative, two formerChief Justices of India (M N Venkat-achaliah and J S Verma), four formerSupreme Court judges (V R Kr ishna Iyer,P B Sawant, K Ramaswamy and SantoshHegde) and one former high courtchief justice (A P Shah) signed astatement calling for the imme-diate revocation of the uncon-stitutional notification underthe MGNREGA bypassing theminimum wage law. Adding to thegovernments embarrassment, ad-ditional solicitor general Indira Jais-ing gave a written opinion that anypayment below the minimum wagewould amount to forced labour, vi-olating the fundamental right againstexploitation.

The two civil society forces behindthe MGNREGA, Aruna Roy and JeanDreze, took up the issue in their own differ-ent ways. Dreze, as part of an advisory body,was instrumental in obtaining Jaisings legalopinion. Roy has been on a dharna with oth-er activists for more than a month in Ra-jasthan. In all this churning within the insti-tutions of governance and civil society, theMinistry of Rural Development has come un-der attack for giving precedence to financialconcerns over constitutional rights. There wasno way the ministry could have got away withits subversion of the minimum wage princi-ple as it directly and immediately affected theearnings of the rural poor.

But this subversion is actually part of a se-ries of systemic changes made by the ministry.These changes have caused the scheme to de-

viate from its original avatar as a radical planto mitigate the rigors of jobless growth.Thechanges are as follows:G The first major indication of the ministryscavalier attitude came in 2008. It was evidentin the way it responded to the CAGs perform-ance audit report on the MGNREGA.When theCAG lamented the wide gap between preceptand practice of the programme, the ministrysought to play down lapses by claiming that itsperformance should not be judged on the basisof its operational guidelines as they weremerely a recommendation. Thus, by the gov-ernments own admission, this very complexand ambitious programme, which in the lastBudget was allocated Rs 40,100 crores,does nothave a proper administrative framework.G The ministry amended the social audit pro-vision in such a way that the executing agency,that is the panchayat, has become less ac-countable than before. The amendment,effected

on December 31, 2008, overturned the basic prin-

ciple of audit. It empowers the panchayat to con-duct its own audit. As a result, the only crediblemodel of social audit in the country, designed bythe Andhra government, is no longer legal as ithinges on the participation of trained personnelfrom outside the panchayat.GWithin 24 hours of demolishing the social auditsafeguard, the ministry came up with its infamousnotification violating the minimum wage law.Thatnotification, issued on January 1,2009 has broughtout the unbridled discretionary power conferredon the Centre by Section 6(1) of the Act to fix wageslower than the minimum wage. Sonia suggestedthat a way out of the current mess might be if theCentre issued a fresh notification catching up with

the minimum wages in various states. Butfor a long-term solution, this am-

biguous provision onwage rate needs

to be

read down by courts or amended by Parliament topreserve the sanctity of minimum wage.GOn November 11,2009, the ministry issued a no-tification shifting the MGNREGAs focus fromlabour intensive to material intensive projects.Expanding the scope of work that could be un-dertaken under the Act, the ministry ordered thatthe MGNREGA funds be diverted to construct afacilitation centre in each village named after Ra-jiv Gandhi.This executive diktat,besides erodingthe powers granted to the panchayat under theAct, has allowed material contractors to get a footin the door. It has also opened up opportunitiesfor corruption.G The grievance redressal mechanism created in

the form of an ombudsman, through a notificationissued on September 7, 2009, has turned out to betoothless. The ombudsman can only make recom-mendations. Unlike his RTI counterpart, he cantpass orders or impose penalties on errant author-ities. As a result, accountability provisions havelargely remained on paper. These include an un-employment allowance for those who are not pro-vided work within 15 days of their application andcompensation for those

whose payment is de-layed for longerthan 15 days.

Given the in-sidious ways inwhich thescheme is beingrun down by itsown administra-tive ministry, it is just as well thatSonia Gandhi hascalled for correc-tives on the mini-mum wage issue. Inthe run-up to the fifthanniversary of its en-forcement, she needs to domore to rescue her show-piece legislation.

SPECIAL REPORT8SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, NEW DELHI

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

RURAL REPORT CARDS

Some success stories, a few failures implementation is a patchy picture

ALLS WELL

Jaipur: Much before the rural job scheme was launched, the nondescript village of Vijaypura wassuccessfully running its own version. It had issued job cards to famine relief workers. Morerecently, it has given mazdoor cards that track work and wages every day. Vijaypura is one of thefew villages in Rajasthan that are able to run NREGA in model fashion.

Sarpanch Kalu Ram, who won the panchayat election in February 2005, takes pride inVijaypuras transparency. Ours is the only village where work underNREGA is done throughout the year. It is a demand-generated schemeand the moment the pink slips come in from villagers seeking work, webegin it, he says.

The village welcomes visitors with a wall-turned-infograph thatoffers a breakdown of work done, workers names and the money theyearned as part of the rural job scheme. It also lists the material usedand the costs involved. Kalu Ram thought up the wall-infograph topromote transparency. The panchayat office has a signboard that bears

the legend All records can be inspected free of cost.The sarpanch claims he has ensured that everyone in

Vijaypura entitled to a BPL card, has one. He has also initiated agroup payment system, which allots work to groups of fiveworkers each, paying them collectively This ensures that nomember of the group escapes work or gets paid for no workdone, explains Kalu Ram.

Vijaypuras workers get Rs 10,000 for 100 days of work,villagers are happy and Kalu Ram remains sarpanch. Allswell with the world in Vijaypura at least.

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Hyderabad:Naralla Vankanna, 29, is very aware of his rights. At the July 2009 NREGA socialaudit in his Darmeshpuram village in Nalgonda district, he raised the issue of duplicatebeneficiaries. He never expected action on the complaint. But field assistants wereremoved and senior officials were asked to explain themselves soon after.

Unsurprisingly Vankanna believes the social audit is key. They were misusing NREGAfunds. Not only were there duplicate people on their rolls, officials were also showing workdone on paper when in reality it was not. After the audit, the duplicate muster rolls havedecreased and there is better allotment of work, he says.

Some say its all because of Andhra Pradeshs acclaimed model of social audit. Thestate has set up the Society for Social Audit, Accountability and Transparency. But somewho work at the grassroots say the social audit is overrated. What is the point of removingfield assistants when the Mandal Parishad Development Officers, who are responsible forsanctioning work and accounting the expenditure, are left untouched? asks P Prasanthi,

state programme director of the Andhra Pradesh Mahila Samatha Society.Activists point out that the state government appears

to lack the will to act on the audit reports. Crores havebeen misappropriated but no action has been

taken, they say.Auditors admit they are under constant

pressure from politicians and officials, but themonitoring process has helped recover atleast some of the money siphoned offthrough NREGA. It has led to improvements

in the implementation of the programme. Ithas also contributed to the grievance

redressal of the participants of theprogramme, notes Professor S Galab of theCentre for Economic and Social Studies,who has evaluated the social audit.

But activists are not impressed. NearlyRs 30 lakh was siphoned off, they insist;just Rs 95,550 was recovered after thesocial audit.

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MIXED RESULTS

Tonk: It could go down in history as the lowest wage ever paid to anyone by any government.Here, just 40 kms away from Jaipur, NREGA workers get just Re 1 per day. Activists say workersare being cheated and the crime continues unpunished. Compensation for the workers, whohave been cheated, seems a far cry. No senior administrative official has even visited the spot toget an insight into the matter, says Shankar Singh, an activist with Suchna Evenum Rozgar KaAdhikar Abhiyan, the NGO that first brought up the matter.

Between April 26 and May 11 this year, nearly 99 people from Gudaliya village in Tonk districtworked on digging a check dam. Each was paid just Rs 11 altogether, a rupee for each day. This hashappened four times between April and June, with villagers paid Re 1, Rs 7, Rs 12 and Rs 19 each,amounting to Rs 1,215. Officials deny misappropriation of money. One official insisted on conditionof anonymity that the workers collectively dug only an area of 11.97 cubicmetre. Thats why they have been paid so less. There are always suchinstances where villagers gather at an NREGA site but dont work. So, howcan we pay them for no work? The government has enquired into thematter. But the official explains that the report by the junior engineersays that when he visited the spot on May 19, he found 150 people hadbeen registered when in reality only 69 were working.

Shankar Singh, the activist, says its lies, damn lies. This meansthat there were 44 people whose names were falsely recorded butthey were paid. Why did the person not strike off the names of theabsentees? This clearly proves his involvement.

Meanwhile, the workers have refused to take the tiny payments,choosing instead to donate them to the chief ministers relief fund.Someone who is poorer than us will need this money, they say in a

derisive comment on how NREGA has failed them.

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RE 1 PER DAY

Ranchi: NREGA has liberated Danu Mahato, 70. The labourer from Simbulkel village in Khuntidistrict never thought hed be able to pay the moneylender what he owed him. He was heavily indebt. The irony was he too was owed money, having never been paid for work he had done underNREGA a couple of years ago. But in August, a surprised Mahato learnt he would get the back

payment as well as Rs 3000 to compensate for the delay.Mahato is one of 78 labourers in Khunti district who have finally been paid and

compensated in this way. When deputy labour commissioner, Mahendra Murmu,reimbursed the workers at a labour court in Khunti, it was the successful conclusion of a

two-year struggle for justice by the NREGA Sahayata Kendra.The workers plight came to light in May 2009. The Sahayata Kendra was set up

in Khunti by university students and local volunteers under the guidance of JeanDreze, developmental economist and member of the Central Employment

Guarantee Commission. A little over 16 students from universities across thecountry came together to survey implementation of the rural job scheme in

Khunti. They found that work done in 2007-08 at three sites in Tirlaremained uncompensated. When the ministry of rural development

sought an Action Taken Report from then deputy commissioner PujaSinghal, she said there were no outstanding payments. Another

team of student volunteers initiated a follow-up survey in Khuntiin May 2010, in collaboration with the Sahayata Kendra. They

found that nothing had changed in Tirla and the workers werestill unpaid. On May 14, a public hearing in Khunti, attended

by the deputy commissioner and other officials, agreedthat in the absence of records, workers would be

compensated at a flat rate of Rs 3,000, as perSection 30 of NREGA.

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THE NEW DAM THAT WASNT

Mysore: Heres a claim so false it is absurd. A check dam was reportedly built near a mosque atMale Mahadeshwara hills. But there are no mosques in that area.

According to official estimates, more than Rs 300 crore has been misappropriated in Gulbargadistrict alone. A high-level inquiry has been ordered.

Not everything is as bad. A check dam built at Hanur village in Kollegal taluk has done wondersfor the area, raising the ground water level and recharging borewells.

R Dhruvanarayan, MP and a member of the national council for NREGA, says it should bemandatory for gram sabhas to choose the work that they need done.

The biometric card system has helped minimize the prevalence of bogus job cards. The newcards carry a photograph of the labourers entire family.

Dhruvanarayan says that Karnataka is not using as much initiative as Rajasthan when it comesto utilizing the available money. The state has used only Rs 2,110 crore till now as against Rs 4,000crore that was sanctioned by the centre. And only 9 % of the total 45,668 work taken up underMNERGA has been completed, he claims.

Social auditing is urgently needed, he insists.

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VIJAYPURA, RAJASTHAN

KARNATAKA

ANDHRA PRADESH

Thiruvananthapuram:From tribal hamlets in Wayanad to canal criss-crossed Alappuzha, the NREGA if beneficiaries are to be believed is doing wonders in Gods own country.

In Attappadi, Wayanad, the adivasis are redeeming arid land. P VRadhakrishnan, block programme officer at Attappadi, says: We arewell on our way to making 3,344 acres of arid land cultivable in the firstphase. In the next, almost 5,350 acres will be ready for farming.

This is real change with enormous implications because Keralaimports vegetables but could now grow more of its own. Murugan, apoor tribal in Koodanjala ward, says hes used Rs 850 of the NREGAmoney to grow vegetables, managing to sell t hem for twice that.

Three panchayats are currently workingon 14,405 projects worth Rs 64 crore. Thewomen of Idamalakkudi, the newly formed

adivasi panchayat in Idukki district, arebuilding a new road, in a great socialchange that will have great impact.

The state programme officer AbeyGeorge explains that these areprimitive tribals whose women never

come out but the Rs 4.5-crore roadhas the women working shoulder toshoulder with their men.

Alappuzhas coir workershave benefited too.

In order to unclog the townsmany, natural canals, urbanplanners decided to clean and gogreen at the same time, liningtheir walls with coir geo-textile.

The coir workers earned Rs 1crore last year.

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GOOD NEWS STORIES

KERALA

TONK, RAJASTHAN

WORKERS CELEBRATE BACK PAYMENTSJHARKHAND

Piyal Bhattacharjee

When | It was passed in August 2005

What | The Mahatma Gandhi National RuralEmployment Guarantee Act guarantees 100 daysof paid work a year to a rural household

Where | The scheme began on February 2, 2006in 200 districts and covered all 593 districts inIndia by April 1, 2008

Who | Its meant to improve rural peoplespurchasing power, primarily semi or unskilledworkers, irrespective of their positioning above orbelow the poverty line

How | The Centre pays the wages, three-fourthsof all the material used and part of theadministrative costs. Each state pays forunemployment allowance, a fourth of the cost ofmaterial and remaining administrative costs

ALL ABOUT THE ACT