Comments on India Development Blog: NREGS - evidence from UP

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2010-02-15T10:59:35.706+05:30

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Nice post akhand. I am an intern at CMF and workin...

2009-07-04T09:29:45.783+05:30

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.

Quite possible Pallavi. When I wrote this, I exact...

2009-07-03T17:57:57.264+05:30

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.

Interesting post Akhand! So even if audits are mad...

2009-07-03T10:30:42.209+05:30

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?