The Ministry of Rural Development was served a volley of questions regarding implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) on the second day of the Parliament’s monsoon session on September 16, 2020.

Members of Parliament (MP) Pramila Bisoyi, D. K. Suresh, Saugata Ray, P. C. Gaddigoudar and others asked Minister of Rural Development, Narendra Singh Tomar, a series of questions about release and expenditure of funds for the scheme, details of beneficiaries and possible changes in the scheme in view of loss of livelihood due to the coronavirus pandemic. They were also curious to know whether less employment was provided during lockdown as well as the department’s reaction to the claim that state governments received no funds under MGNREGS.

The MGNREGS is an important government policy that assures 100 days of wage employment in a financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. Needless to say, the Ministers were keen to see the effects of this scheme during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Regarding the implementation of the scheme in the current financial year (FY), Minister Tomar said that from April to August, the highest funds were allocated to Andhra Pradesh, Rs. 7,01,966.37 lakhs, while the total expenditure was Rs. 6,60,761.9 lakhs. The lowest funds were given to Goa at Rs. 91.34 lakhs although the total expenditure towards the scheme was Rs. 105.14 lakhs. Similarly, the total expenditure for Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Telangana and Andaman and Nicobar Islands exceeded the total Central funds released.

He added that a total of 86,81,928 new job cards were issued this year compared to the 64,95,823 new job cards issued during the FY 2019-20.

Regarding possible changes in the scheme, Tomar said that the Government did not plan to change the guaranteed days of employment from 100 to 200. However, the scheme provides additional 50 days of unskilled wage employment in case of drought or natural calamity as notified in rural areas. Moreover, he said that the Centre has not planned any special allowances to workers nor will the scheme be extended to urban areas.

“As per Section 3(4) of the Mahatma Gandhi NREG Act, 2005, the State Governments may make provisions for providing additional days beyond the period guaranteed under the Act from their own funds,” he said.

When asked about State-wise wage rates under MGNREGS, Tomar said that the highest wage rates were given in Haryana and Sikkim. The lowest wages were given in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. He also said that States and Union Territories can provide wages greater than the Centre’s wage-rate but that the department does not maintain the minimum wage rate of different States.

He said that the Centre has been able to meet the demand for work with adequate funding and active support of the state governments. On September 10, the Ministry released Rs. 60,44,098.23 lakh to the states and Union Territories (UT) for scheme implementation.

While employment provided in April decreased by 48 percent as compared to last year, August recorded a 56 percent increase in employment provision under the scheme.

MGNREGS data during lockdown is as below:

MP Arun Sao questioned the Ministry about pending wage payments. He specifically asked for details on Chhattisgarh’s districts of Bilaspur and Mungeli as well as the date by which the pendency will be addressed.

Tomar replied that the question of late-payments does not arise because MGNREGS is a demand-driven wage employment programme that pays unskilled workers on a regular basis.

“Under DBT [Direct Benefit Transfer] wage payment is made directly to the bank/post office account of the beneficiary by the central Government through the National Electronic Fund Management System after receiving the Fund Transfer Order (FTO) from the State Government through PFMS. The wage payment for the State of Chhattisgarh is being made through DBT, except 4 IAP districts wherein cash payment provision is made as an exception till October 2020,” said Tomar.

He clarified that as of September 11, there are no pending wages of Chhattisgarh whose districts receive payments either through DBTs or cash as per need. Similarly, he listed States and Union Territories that had pending Fund Transfer Orders (FTOs) such as Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Puducherry. West Bengal had the highest pending FTO of Rs. 39,757.05115 lakhs while Puducherry had the lowest pending FTO of Rs. 74.12165 lakhs.

On pending material and administration funds, the Minister said that the Government of India releases such funds to the concerned State Government and thus does not directly release material funds to districts.

Member of Parliament Dibyendu Adhikari asked the Ministry of Rural Development to confirm whether as many as 145 million households (over 14 crores households) had applied for work under the MGNREGS between April to July, signifying a 60 percent increase from last year. He asked for the number of people employed until August 31 as well as the Centre’s proposal to provide employment to all applicants.

In reply, Tomar stated that over 12 crore households demanded work under the scheme between the months of April and July in current FY 2020-21. Last year nearly 9 crore households – 8,99,42,082 households – applied under this scheme, indicating a 38.73 increase in the current financial year. The Minister added that over 8 crore beneficiaries – 8,13,67,966 beneficiaries – received employment under this scheme until August 31.

Regarding government proposals, Tomar said that beneficiaries under the scheme are entitled for unemployment allowance from the concerned state, if they are not employed within 15 days of receipt of their application or from the date on which employment has been sought in case of an advance application. He also said that states and UTs prepare a revised shelf of works before the start of a new financial year depending upon the demand of jobs in the field.

Another member of Parliament Ravi Kishan asked the Government whether people were receiving 100 days of assured employment in the continuing demand for MGNREGS.

“The demand for work is influenced by various factors such as rain-fall, availability of alternative and remunerative employment opportunities outside Mahatma Gandhi NREGS etc. During the current FY 2020-21 as on 12.09.2020, a total of 7.93 lakh households is [sic] various States/UTs … completed 100 days of employment under the Mahatma Gandhi NREGS as per their demand,” said Tomar.

In Andhra Pradesh as many as 2.62 lakhs households had completed 100 days of employment while no family completed employment under this scheme in Goa, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Lakshadweep Islands.

MoP S. Venkatesan asked the Rural Development Minister whether the government had any proposal to increase the number of eligible work days under MGNREGA as well as details about the average mandays at the national level and State-wise employed under the policy between April and August this year.

To the first question, Tomar replied with a curt “No sir.” At the national level the scheme provided 12 mandays in April, 17 mandays in May, 6 mandays in June, 14 man-days in July and 12 mandays in August this year.

The state-wise number of mandays can be seen below:

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The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) numbers in Maharashtra have doubled in the past five days and have now crossed the two-lakh mark to come up to 212,800, reported The Indian Express.

These numbers have gone up from about 40,000 on April 12 to over a lakh by April 22 and further doubled in the next five days. Ranga Nayak, State MNREGS Commissioner told IE, “As on April 26, the total attendance in the state on MNREGS works stands at 212,800.”

Districts where the numbers are above 10,000 are Amravati (30,678), Gadchiroli (18,817), Chandrapur (16,262), Beed (17,450), Palghar (14,677), Yavatmal (12, 250) and Bhandara (10,973). “Works, however, are going on in all 34 districts of the state,” he added. Nayak also said, “We are witnessing an increase in attendance of about 30,000 every two-three days. Most works currently under way are in horticulture and Gramin Awas (rural housing) schemes.”

Nayak said that the department had started “a very aggressive campaign to provide works to the needy, affected by the coronavirus pandemic.” Since large gatherings are not allowed, he said they were focusing on individual works. “But about 20% of the attendance can be attributed to community works as well,” he said.

He also said that they had finalized about 35,000 individual works under 216 categories like digging of wells at farms, making cattle sheds, horticulture work and construction of homes under the Awas Yojana. “I have asked the staff to personally approach the beneficiaries, instead of the other way round, to pro-actively speed up works,” he said.

Saying that the state was trying to clear rejected online wage transactions on a “war footing”, he mentioned that the state had issued orders to the publish the list of beneficiaries at government offices such as that of the  collector, zila parishad CEO, sub-divisional officers, tehsildars and gram panchayats.

Other states and MNREGS

Even Rajasthan has seen a sharp jump in MNREGS numbers amid the lockdown. Rajasthan Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot, who also holds the Rural Development and Panchayati Raj portfolio, told The Indian Express on Wednesday that in six days, the numbers in the state had gone up from 62,000 on April 17 to 6.08 lakh on April 22.

Pilot said the numbers had seen a huge jump after some restrictions were eased on Monday. He said, “We started planning from April 17, before the modified lockdown started, to ensure that maximum work was generated under the MNREGS. Within days, we have registered an increase of 10 times with the current figure of engaged workers being 6.08 lakh.”

According to government data, the total number of MNREGS labourers rose from 62,000 on April 7 to 2 lakh, 2.5 lakh, 3 lakh, 4.5 lakh and 6.08 lakh over successive days. Speaking about how MNREGS wages was the only way to revive the rural economy, he said, “We have made more than 99 percent of due payments. Our emphasis is to give them maximum individual work, rather than community work, to ensure social distancing.”

He added, “Even if a person is given work for constructing his own home under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana under the MNREGS, that individual will be paid. Even for community works, we have made sure that the labour force is spread out.” He had inspected the MNREGS work sites falling under the jurisdiction of the Chaksu panchayat samiti near Jaipur, and instructed officials to ensure social distancing, medical kits and soaps for labourers.

PC Kishan, Rajasthan’s MNREGS Commissioner said that the demand for the scheme was expected to increase in the next few months. He also said that relatively affluent villagers could be seeking jobs under MNREGS to compensate the loss of income during the lockdown.

The enrollment for manual work under MNREGS, which provides at least 100 days of employment a year to at least one member for every rural household has increased up to threefold in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, reported the Hindustan Times.

A Madhya Pradesh government official said that due to shortage of staff at panchayat offices, they had not been able to enroll all of those who wanted to register under the scheme. In MP, around 375,000 people have been provided work under MNREGS although over 10 million had enrolled. Additional chief secretary (rural development and panchayati raj) Manoj Shrivastava said, “All panchayats have been asked to immediately start MGNREGS works related to water harvesting and agriculture.”

In Bihar and Odisha too, the situation is the same due to the upsurge in migrant workers who have returned home. However, a government official from Odisha said the government had provided immediate financial relief to all migrant workers because it wasn’t possible to enroll all those who were interested under MNREGS immediately.

TS Singhdeo, Chhattisgarh’s Panchayat Raj minister too said that there had been an increase in enrollment under MNREGS in the past 10 days. He said, ““Last year, till April, a similar number of people were enrolled for MGNREGS but this year we expect to provide work to 1.5 million more people under the scheme.”

Focus on individual assets

Government data has shown that just two types of activities – construction (on individual land) and sanitation works, are set aside for 69 percent of the total work under MNREGS for this financial year, HT reported. As per the date on work status for FY20-21, 50 percent of the work under MGNREGS is for construction of individual properties and 19 percent are sanitation-related.

“These activities”, according to a rural ministry official, “perfectly suits us to allot work to large number of workers and meet a demand surge as constructing a house or a toilet requires hardly one to three workers.”

As of April 29, 2020, there are 116,937,214 active MNREGS workers in the country. As on April 23, just 1.58 million people had received work under the scheme.

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K.B.Vasanthi, 48, is a block panchayat member in Thalikulam block, Thrissur. She has been working under MGNREGS since 2008, and says if it weren’t for these wages, she would not have thought of contesting elections.
 
Vasanthi has continued to work under MGNREGS despite being an elected local-government representative, although not as much as before. “My husband has health issues and the money he earns from fishing hasn’t been great for a while. We had loans to pay and three children to take care of. MGNREGS work has been of great help,” she said.
 
Between 2008-09 and 2016-17, 90% of MGNREGS workers in Kerala were women. Nationally, women comprised, on average, 52% of MGNREGS work force, their participation having peaked at 57% in 2016-17.
 
Such high participation of women in manual labour was not always the norm in Kerala. In 2005, just 15.9% of the state’s women worked for a living, when the national average was around 30.7%.
 
“Back then, people thought it strange that we were doing manual labour, and made fun,” Devayani Kuttan, 52, who has been working under MGNREGS since 2008, told IndiaSpend, “They thought it was not worth it.”
 
The role of Kudumbashree, Kerala’s poverty eradication and women’s empowerment mission, has been significant in mobilising women for the unskilled labour opportunities that MGNREGS offers, and ultimately changing old attitudes. The complementarity between Kudumbashree’s self-help groups and the jobs programme has spawned economic and social opportunities that women have been quick to grasp.
 
How Kudumbashree mobilised women workers
 
The role of community-based organisations and self-help groups formed under Kudumbashree in enabling MGNREGS is well-recognised, as this 2012 Kudumbashree report noted.
 
Kudumbashree creates ward- and panchayat-level citizens’ groups that work in tandem with local self-governments to reduce poverty and improve governance.
 
At the ward level, groups play a critical role in registering labourers, preparing annual action plans for MGNREGS, and providing amenities at work sites. An executive decision by the government ensured supervisors for MGNREGS would be chosen from among Kudumbashree groups, and has made Kerala the only state in the country with 100% women supervisors, the report said.
 
“When the number of workers at one site is less than 50, the supervisors are considered as workers and given daily wages for unskilled workers. But when there are more than 50 workers, the supervisors are considered as semi-skilled workers and given wages of semi-skilled workers,” Vinodhini N., joint programme coordinator for MGNREGS in Thrissur district, said.
 
The works identified by Kudumbashree neighbourhood groups are submitted for discussion at village- and ward-level groups. Finally, the Grama Panchayath Committee gives its approval.
 
In this way, Kudumbashree has paved the way for MGNREGS.
 
The preponderance of women in MGNREGS, meanwhile, has resulted from the gender wage gap in the state. Men earn more than women in other jobs, whereas MGNREGS pays men and women the same wage. So men have been less interested in MGNREGS, leaving the field wide open to women.
 
Wage difference
 
Kerala has the widest gender wage gap for casual wage labour (unskilled non-public work)–at Rs 227 per day, men earned Rs 107.3 per day more than women in 2012, according to this MGNREGS Sameeksha (assessment) report.
 
Generally, in places with wide gender pay gap, more women participate in MGNREGS as men prefer other higher-paying jobs, the report said. But there are exceptions such as Punjab and Haryana, which may be explained by limited demand for non-public work, which pushes men to avail MGNREGS employment. Other factors could be non-availability of work suitable for women, or cultural reasons such as non-acceptance of women in the labour force, the report added.
 
Financial security and social ties
 
The Kudumbashree-MGNREGS link, by providing women with a sustained opportunity for work, has created a steady source of income for them. Currently, the wage rate under MGNREGS in Kerala is Rs 268 per day.
 
“Women know that they will get  equal pay for equal work which is not the case elsewhere,” said ward member Vasanthi. “If it was not for MGNREGS, I would not have stood for elections.”
 
Since getting employed under MGNREGS, many of her fellow workers have become vocal and confident, she said, adding, “The access to a source of income has strengthened their self-belief.”
 
Over the years, as more women have registered and shared their experiences, and the government’s mobilisation and awareness campaigns have begun to have an impact, the numbers have increased, MGNREGS worker Kuttan said.
 
Many women workers get offered casual work by other employers due to their MGNREGS experience. Kuttan said she saved money for her daughter’s wedding and bought jewellery from her MGNREGS savings.
 
There has been a four-percentage-point decrease in women’s participation in 2016-17, which an official–speaking on condition of anonymity–said was because more “scientific” methods were being used to assess workers’ performance, which may have discouraged the elderly and some other workers from taking up MGNREGS work.
 

Devayani Kuttan (left), 52, says times have changed since she began working under MGNREGS in 2008. Over the years, the wages have helped her finance her daughter’s wedding and buy jewellery, traditionally considered a moveable asset.
 
Often, workers deposit Rs 30-50 a week into the thrift fund set up by their local Kudumbashree unit. The small regular savings of neighborhood groups are pooled and given out as internal loans to the most deserving in the group, according to the Kudumbashree website. These loans are useful if members face immediate financial shocks. Members’ MGNREGS wages have enlarged this pool.
 
MGNREGS work has also strengthened bonds between workers, enabling elderly women to work, too. “The employment programme gives me a source of income. Who else will employ me at my age?” said 65-year-old Devaki, one such beneficiary in Thalikulam village, who only shared her first name.
 
At 13%, Kerala has the highest proportion of over-60 people in the country, IndiaSpend reported on October 7, 2017. When the work gets cumbersome, the younger workers lend a hand, Vasanthi said, adding, “Our interactions change our social attitude towards the elderly, and allow us to realise the work that goes into maintaining a community.”
 
Series concluded. You can read the first part here and the second part here.
 
(Paliath is an analyst at IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

The post How A Make-Work Programme Changed The Lives Of Women In Kerala appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Sukhrani, 50, spends her MGNREGS wages on clothes and medicines for her family. Unemployed since four months at the time of this interview, she said the scheme owes her Rs 6,000. She has been buying milk on loan for two months, and has been forced to borrow food, money and clothes to make daily ends meet for her family of five.

Prajapati, who previously worked as a labourer at the local market in Mavai village in Uttar Pradesh’s Banda district, has been taking loans to get by. When he complains to officials about delayed wages, he is asked to continue working so that his pending wages get paid, he told IndiaSpend. Often, there is just five days’ work in two months, and MGNREGS wages have not increased his overall income, he said.
 
Millions of MGNREGS workers share Prajapati’s predicament–57% of wages due to workers were unpaid at the end of April 2018, as per government data.

 
 
This is the second of our three-part series on India’s vast rural jobs guarantee programme, part of our investigation of key government schemes’ performance in the run-up to the 2019 elections.
 
Delayed wages are routine
The world’s largest job-guarantee programme, MGNREGS promises 100 days of unskilled work to villagers. However, wage payments have been routinely delayed, sometimes by several months, due to lack of funds, incorrect computation of compensation due or procedural delays.
 
For the financial year 2018-19, the central government’s fund allocation for MGNREGS increased 14.5% over the previous year to Rs 55,000 crore, the highest ever. Yet, the percentage of wages unpaid was 57% in April 2018.
 

 
At the beginning of April 2018, as many as 99% of total fund transfer orders (FTOs) were delayed. By the end of the month, however, the authorities had cranked up the payment system to ensure a 42-percentage-point drop in unpaid wages to 57%, after the central government released funds on April 10, 2018, NREGA Sangharsh Morcha, an association of MGNREGS activists, told IndiaSpend.
 
Nevertheless, the preponderant majority of wages, 57%, remained unpaid.
 
Although the government claimed in an October 2017 statement that 85% of wages due to MGNREGS workers for the year 2017-18 until September 15, 2017, were paid on time, an independent study has shown this is not true.
 
Conducted across 10 states from April to September 2017, the study found that only 32% of payments were made on time.
 
MGNREGS wage payment delays have been a long-standing issue–19 state governments had stopped payments in October 2017 primarily due to lack of funds, which in some cases was because states’ audited reports of financial statements had not reached the central government in time to receive funds, IndiaSpend had reported in November 2017.
 
Nearly 85% of the central government’s allocation of Rs 48,000 crore had already been spent when the article was written, leaving wages amounting to Rs 3,066 crore unpaid at that time.
 
As of April 12, 2018, these 19 states’ status, as per data from the scheme’s website, is as follows:
 

• In West Bengal, where payments had been frozen since September 2017, 100% FTOs were pending since November 2017.
• Eight states had 100% FTOs pending since February 2018.
• Assam and Kerala had FTOs pending since January 2018.
• Six states had FTOs pending since March 2018. Meghalaya, Mizoram and Sikkim, three states whose data were unavailable previously, also had FTOs pending since March 2018.
• Of the 19 states, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh had fewer delayed payments.

 
Flawed definition of delay
 
Under the scheme’s provisions, workers should receive wage payments within 15 days of the ‘muster roll’ (attendance register) being closed, that is, after their work is done. If not, they are entitled to compensation at a fixed rate of 0.05% of the unpaid wages per day from the 16th day of the muster roll being closed, for the entire duration of delay.
 
The procedure followed to calculate wage payments is explained in this November 2017 IndiaSpend article. Ideally, workers should be compensated for delays until the day wages are credited into their accounts.
 
However, the Management Information System(MIS) of MGNREGS, responsible for maintaining records on muster rolls, wages and material payments, only considers delays until the day the FTO is generated at the block/panchayat level (provided it has been generated 15 days after the closing of muster rolls) and sent to the central government. Any delay thereafter by the central government in crediting payments is not considered. As a result, workers do not get the entire compensation they deserve.
 
To understand the magnitude of this flawed definition, the Azim Premji University study is instructive.
 
Key findings
 
The study was conducted in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala, Orissa and West Bengal, for the period April to September 2017, covering 4.5 million accounts.
 
Overall, 78% payments were not made on time in these 10 states, while as many as 45% payments did not include compensation for delayed payment because FTOs were generated within 15 days.

 
The biggest difference between government claims and wages actually paid on time is in Chhattisgarh–the government claimed 94% wages were paid on time, when in fact 28% were. In West Bengal, the claim was for 87% timely payments but actually only 17% payments were made on time.
 
In five of the states, more than 50% of payments did not include compensation for delayed payment.
 
When workers do not get their payments on time, they usually resort to borrowing money, and sometimes even food.
 
“It’s been two months, we haven’t been able to afford milk by ourselves,” Sukhrani, 50, told IndiaSpend. She said the scheme owes her Rs 6,000, and she stopped working some four months back. “We scrounge and borrow to feed ourselves. We don’t even have slippers. You have to take loans to afford things. I’ve borrowed Rs 150 myself.”
 
The central government is supposed to clear payments within 24 hours of receiving FTOs. However, the study found, when FTOs were generated within 15 days, it took up to 25 days on average to credit the wage payment–from the central government to the states, and the states to workers. This amounted to as many as 53 days in West Bengal, or as few as 10 days in Madhya Pradesh.
 
Not all of the actual compensation due is paid, as the following table shows.
 

Source: Analysis of Payment Delays and Delay Compensation in NREGA Findings across Ten States for Financial Year 2017-18
 
The study calculated the compensation for delay until the day payments were deposited into workers’ accounts.
 
These estimates show that MIS missed as much as 86% of the compensation truly due. In Kerala, 98% of the compensation due was not calculated. In West Bengal and Chhattisgarh, more than 90% of the compensation due was missed.
 
Overall, the study estimated that Rs 7.52 crore should have been paid as compensation during April-September 2017, but actually only Rs 1.03 crore (14%) was paid.
 
In response to the above study, the rural development ministry said on April 4, 2018, that it had improved timeliness of wage payments so that wages paid on time had increased from 17% in 2016-17 to 43% in 2017-18, implicitly admitting that a majority (57%) of wage payments due were delayed in 2017-18.
 
Lack of funds, new system, compulsory Aadhaar linkage causing delays
 
Ram Naresh, 38, a resident of Banda district in central Uttar Pradesh, started working under MGNREGS 11 years ago, when the programme began. However, he has had no work under MGNREGS since May 2016.
 
Over a year, he either gets work for a month or 15 days, he told IndiaSpend, as against the 100 days promised. He supplements his unstable wages with other daily-wage work, sometimes traveling as far as 6 km for work. While he waits for his MGNREGS payments, he has to borrow to feed his four children.
 
“I haven’t worked for MNREGA since 2016,” Naresh told IndiaSpend. “Not because I don’t want to but because there isn’t any work. They are yet to pay me my remaining amount from last year. Why should I work if I don’t get the money?”
 
“A primary reason for delayed wage payments is lack of funds,” Rajendran Narayanan, co-author of the above study, told IndiaSpend. “In the first week of December 2017, out of the allocated budget of Rs 48,000 crore for the financial year 2017-18, around Rs 45,000 crore was already exhausted.”
 
Some Rs 14,000 crore of the budget allocated for MGNREGS in 2017-18 was actually funds that the government fell short of the previous year, thus adding them to the 2017-18 budget, Narayanan said.
 
Inadequate funding has driven daily MGNREGS wages lower than the minimum agricultural wage in 28 of India’s 36 states and union territories. The difference is as much as Rs 104 (roughly a third) in Gujarat, where agricultural wages are Rs 298 and MGNREGS wages Rs 194 during the current fiscal year, according to this April 2018 article in The Indian Express.
 
MGNREGS wages are revised every year as per a consumer price index for agricultural labourers (CPI-AL), which reflects a 35-year-old consumption pattern. As a result, in 10 states, MGNREGS wages have not been revised upwards since 2017-18.  
 
In a few states such as Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, where MGNREGS wages are higher than the state’s minimum wage, MGNREGS wages have increased by Rs 2.
 
In August 2017, the department of expenditure of the finance ministry released a memorandum stating that the reasons for delay included infrastructure bottlenecks, lack of funds and lack of administrative compliance.
 
Yet, in March 2018, the rural development ministry told the Rajya Sabha (upper house of parliament) that delays in wage payments were due to implementation issues at the state level. These issues included inadequate staffing, non-timely recording and reporting of attendance, data entry, generation of wage lists and FTOs, and so on.
 
The compulsory linkage of Aadhaar, the 12-digit unique identity number, to the bank accounts of MGNREGS workers has also created problems. If Aadhaar numbers are linked with incorrect bank accounts, wage payments can get credited incorrectly.
 
Experts say all of these reasons act together to delay payments.
 
Another reason for delayed payments is states’ failure to send audited reports of their accounts on time to the central government, Ankita Aggarwal of NREGA Sangharsh Morcha told IndiaSpend in January 2018.
 
Yet another possible culprit is the National Electronic Fund Management System (Ne-FMS), the central government’s payment system introduced at the beginning of 2016-17, which gives the central government the sole authority to make wage payments using the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) system. Funds go from the central government to a state’s Employment Guarantee Fund, and then to a worker’s account.
 
Before Ne-FMS, states could use their own funds to make payments during delays and seek reimbursement from the Centre later, Aggarwal said, but not any more.
 
In the study quoted above, six of the 10 states were under the Ne-FMS system when the study began, and these performed no better or worse than those using the previous system. “In our analysis on delayed payments, there wasn’t any significant improvement seen in crediting wages on time to labourers [through Ne-FMS],” Narayanan said.
 
“Though it is possible that more FTOs are being generated within 15 days, crediting the amount still takes a long time,” Narayanan said, “The excessive centralisation of payments under Ne-FMS has meant that the baton of accountability is being constantly passed around by the field functionaries of [MGNREGS]. One will often hear field functionaries of NREGA say that they have generated the FTO, but the Centre has not released payments.”
 
While various agencies pass the buck around, workers such as Gulaab Rani, 65, are disillusioned. “The money gets transferred to the bank. But if it doesn’t even reach the bank, then where are we expected to get it from?” she said, adding, “If they aren’t going to pay me, what’s the point of working at all?”
 
 
This is the second of a three-part series on the successes and failures of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. You can read the first part here.
 
Next: More Than 90% MGNREGS Workers In Kerala Are Women, And It Has Changed Their Lives
 
(This story has been produced in partnership with Khabar Lahariya, the country’s only indie, rural media platform, working out of Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, with an all-women reporters’ network. Nair is a graduate in Economics and Statistics from the University of Mumbai.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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