Got hands on an interesting read today. An empirical study from a Medak district in Andhra Pradesh found that NREGS improves food security and decreases anxiety levels. The study conducted by Shamika Ravi at ISB takes out data from June 2007 to Dec 2008. I tried searching link for the paper but could only get an abstract to share with. May be I'll summarize conclusion here -
1. Besides food the program raises the probability of savings and expenditure.
2. There is a significant decrease of emotional dis-stress in form of anxiety, tension and worries
3. Authors opine that in long term NREGS might have multiplier effects like increased wareness, good child education, that would foster well being of not just actual but also potential beneficiaries.
I tried to understand the econometrics of the paper too, but I guess requires more than one read to comprehend that completely. Anyways, I wish the study's result hold for pan india.
Karl, one of the interns with CMF this summer and I have been going on field for last few weeks in Allahabad and Sultanpur districts of Uttar Pradesh. Plus I have been reading local hindi newspaper and here is something we have to share -
1. Today the newspaper reported a traffic jam by villagers in Soraon block, when the village development officer wrote Rs 42 in their books, and not Rs 100 which is the daily wage as specified in UP. Surprisingly, no body(including SDM) directly asked the officer to correct it. The news said that in the end SDM asked development officer to look into the matter. Shamika's paper too brings out that corruption is one reason because of which people do not want to participate in NREGS.
2. While talking to microfinance clients, we often hear that, "I do not want to enrol in NREGS because I do not have time". "No time" is also reported in Shamika's paper as a reason why some people did not join NREGS.
3. My uncle, who supposedly is close to sarpanch of his village told me that NREGS money is divided 50% each between development officer and sarpanch!.
In Panchayat systems it was opined that while DO and Sarpanch would work together on development issues, beacuse of different priorities they would also keep check on each other's action. Didn't anybody thought of this nexus then?
4. Apart from this; fake names, fake works are teeming in NREGS.
There is so much money in NREGS that it is fishing grounds for corrupt officers. I have thought hard about this whole corruption issue and still unable to figure out the root cause. Well, as for now I suggest few steps that rural development ministry can quickly take up as a measure to prevent corruption.
1. Sounds naive, but think about it, who is not corrupt - the one who has strong values, one who believes in cause. Ministry should conduct compulsory trainings of BDO's, CDO's SDM's, DM's, on these issues.
2. Getting a CAG report once a year is not enough. The audit and more so operational audit systems should be made more stronger and frequent.
3. I believeThe HR systems in sarkari (government) departments are the root cause of high corruption and smart changes in that can make a big difference.
I feel bad about so much money just being used to build up a mansion, while intended for the poor.
Thursday 2 July 2009
NREGS - evidence from UP
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3 comments:
Interesting post Akhand! So even if audits are made more frequent, the auditors would probably just join into the dev officer-sarpanch group to now divide the money three ways right?
Do you think social audit is a good option? Like the ones done by Jean Dreze, Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey through MKSS? They recruit students from colleges to carry out social audit in their summers etc. If this trend could be widely encouraged and incentives used; probably universities could give credits for it, I think I could contribute too. I'm a student myself and I'd definitely go if given the option. Besides, its a national service by students, something like NSS; for some, it just add CV value :)
PS: Checking records etc is just tedious work not requiring many skills other than aggression and motivation, so students are good for it right? What do you think?
Quite possible Pallavi. When I wrote this, I exactly thought of the same point and then I had MFI's audit systems as an example where guys do frequent audits and keep a strict control on operations.
The idea of social audit is good too. But I would rather suggest to create an institution that specializes in this, may be as MKSS. These could be hired by CDOs and Government officers to make audits.
Nice post akhand.
I am an intern at CMF and working with doug on NREGA project in andhra pradesh. AP is known for more or less corruption free NREGA implementation (I have been to few remote AP villages for my field work). A few observations i would like to share with you and i hipe you can link them up with UP case and we can keep discussing on it.
1). Did you find any evidence of caste wise segregation of worksites?? Are there any caste leaders?? If yes, as far as my observation goes in case of NREGA-AP, where there is caste segregation and there are caste leaders, there are chances of abnormalities in NREGA implementation such as, Wage seeker knowing very less about his/her payment schedules, jobcards being held by caste leaders, they have no say in fizing up the NREGA calander, may have to knowledge about Indramma scheme (Rs. 3200 payment).
2). Second observation is for pallavi's post. Your concern is right but there are many other ways in which social audit is performed. For example there are some independent organizations in AP which are conducting social audits. They are professional in work. Also, in my field visit i talked to mandal level officers (AP has mandals instead of blocks), they are very much concerned about this social audit and also they have 2 audits, one village level and one at their official level, which is verifification of bills and other payment related orders directly under the supervision of the collector of the district. This two pronged auditing can bring down corruption chances drastically (in states like UP).
3). (to akhand) another issue which i would like to discuss s the payment methods. In AP all payments are disbursed through post offices and people have the passbooks with them. Can you comment something on the payment method in UP?? This would open new avenues for discussing corruption possibilities.
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