some news and insights on NREGA from Akhand Tiwari:
The morning news at All India Radio had a plea from Dr Raghuvansh Prasad Yadav, (Read it in hindi here). Dr Yadav is Union Minister of Rural Development, and has asked state’s government co-operation for implementation of NREGA. He also announced to celebrate 2nd February as rojgar diwas (employment day). More about NREGA
Here are few comments on CAG’s report published in EPW’s January 26 issue. It tells how very poor (for whom the program is targeted) have not been reached. There are two reasons for this. First only 3.2% of registered members were provided the minimum days work and second this number is actually the people who demanded work that includes equal number of well-off and poor families. Thus it also opines that registered number of household in no-way reflects the health of program. To quote directly from the article, which was directly taken from CAG’s report “giving the additional charge of PO to BDOs [block development officers], who were responsible for other developmental schemes at the block level, strikes at the root of effective implementation of NREGA”. And this has been the reason for ineffectiveness of many government programs. My experience reflects the same story and it’s not only at the block level its much higher up to the secretary level in states. At lower level while, the reason is un-devotedness towards the success of program and government’s reluctance to use funds in totality (otherwise why there were no recruitments for this purpose specially). At much higher level it is huge bureaucratic lobby, which prevents experts from taking the highest executive positions for such work. They just become masks to be put into committees (often review committees)
This statement from the article tells the rest of the story – “The history of public works in the subcontinent suggests that expecting corruption to disappear overnight is unrealistic.”
1 comments:
Akhand makes an excellent point that those in charge of implementing the NREG scheme must be extra vigilant now, in the early days of the scheme, if the corruption that has plagued other similar schemes is to be avoided.
I disagree with Akhand's dire assesment of the current state of NREG implementation though. As the EPW editorial points out, the criticisms of the CAG report have been greatly exaggerated by the media. With regard to the 3.2% figure quoted by Akhand, the EWP editorial staff points out:
"Unfortunately, the report has been used by some to discredit and dismiss the Act itself. One example of the media sensationalising
the CAG’s findings is the highlighting of the report’s finding
that only 3.2 per cent of registered households have been provided work for 100 days (the minimum number of days of work to be provided under the Act). This ignores the fact that the percentage of registered households is always likely to exceed
those who actually demand work (since job cards have been proactively distributed to well-off and poor alike). It is worth noting that only around 55 per cent of registered households have actually accessed NREGA employment. Therefore, the percentage
of registered households accessing 100 days is not an indicator
of the health of the programme."
In fact, as has been reported elsewhere elsewhere (see articles by Jean Dreze in the Hindu), there have been encouraging signs that with the exception of rural Orissa, corruption in the implementation of NREG has been far lower than in other government programs.
Post a Comment