The idea of MGNREGA was conceived, based on the fact that the planning and implementation of the schemes will be done in a decentralized manner, which will honor the local and traditional knowledge and decision making. However in the last twelve years MGNREGA has seen strong centralized bureaucratic control over the programme which has demolished the spirit of employment guarantee and the idea of a demand based allocation of work.

MGNREGS today has become everything, which it was suppose to challenge and rectify. The exploitation of workers, non dignified wages, contractor based delivery have become some of the common features of MGNREGA. The great Indian bureaucracy has again turned a revolutionary programme into a failed dream. The over centralization and administrative control over implementation and misinterpretations of the law by the administrators, have been the primary reasons why NREGA could not give out, what it was suppose to deliver. However, the programme still is a lifeline for crores of rural households but it could never reach it’s true potential. In true sense, MGNREGS as a programme hasn’t evolved since it’s inception and an ACT which was suppose to transform the scenario of rural jobs has now become an agonizing compulsion for the workers across the nation. The need and benefits of rural employment guarantee is unquestionable but the implementing mechanisms and policy inertia has kept the programme at stagnation.

MGNREGA in it’s current form is seen as an asset creation machine which considers the workers as tools for generation of assets. The Ministry of Rural Development presently has little focus on worker’s dignity and well being and thus, contractor based service delivery, which is common in rural job schemes can be observed everywhere despite the fact that employment guarantee ACT completely eradicates the idea of contractors in the MGNREG schemes. The wages and benefits of the workers are non-lucrative and monitoring in terms of preserving worker’s rights are negligible. Disinterest among workers further paved way for the contractors and middle men to take control which resulted in heavy leakages.

Asset generation focus in an employment guarantee programme further has an implication on the budget allocations. Too much asset focus has resulted in state wise targets for assets and thereby having limited allocation of funds based on number of targeted assets. This has huge implication on ground. The MGNREGA budget allocation has always been inadequate to meet the needs of workers. While the budget allocations should be made based on the decentralized labour budget planning in the Gram Sabhas and number of job card holding households, the allocation nowadays are being done based on asset generation plans of the government. The idea of MGNREGA was also to provide additional employment of 100 days to people apart from the existing jobs available in the rural schemes. In the present scenario MGNREGA has been integrated with a whole lot of other existing rural asset schemes such construction of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna, Anganwadi centres and toilets under Swachh Bharat Mission, which reduces the scope of additional income. Also, these programmes have a contractor or owner driven implementation process wherein contractors or the owners themselves supervise the schemes, causing regular violation of the MGNREGA provisions.

The MGNREGA wages are ridiculously low and in most states it is even lower than the state’s agricultural minimum wage. While, this itself is a blatant violation of the Law, the constant wage delays in MGNREGA has put workers into more trouble. The centralized payments systems have further added more insult to the injury as people have to now wait for their rightful wages for a long long time due to central delays in release of funds.

The Ministry of Rural Development, for the past couple of years have been constantly boasting up about the NREGA budget allocations and have been terming the allocations as highest ever. Not only the ministry has terribly miscalculated the budget, it has also ignored the inflation adjustments and the yearly increase in the number of job cards while exultantly announcing the allocations as highest ever. In real terms the budget has only reduced in the past few years as the funds for a certain financial year include a huge pending liability of the previous year. As a result of the inadequate allocations, every year funds get dried up halfway into the year and thus causing tremendous stress on the workers and joblessness at ground. Joblessness in the peak working seasons cause huge number of people migrating to towns.

In an employment guarantee programme the claims of highest ever allocation does not hold any value, if it is insufficient to meet the needs of the workers. Adequacy of funds is what is important to meet the current demand in the nation and claims of highest ever allocations does not really change the abysmal situation on ground. The central government should now stop bragging about the funds and work on providing sufficient allocations and timely release of funds to states.

While, several ground surveys show that MGNREGA is not functioning properly, the central government’s repeated claims of MGNREGA running successfully, raise questions on the credibility and intentions of this government. Furthermore, it is more derisive that the central government has been making these claims on the basis of their official Management Information system(MIS), authenticity of which is already questioned on various occasions and in different platforms. It has been proved on multiple occasions that reports shown on the MIS vary distinctly from the ground realities.

The larger issues of inadequate allocations, centralized payments and delays in wages have destroyed MGNREGA which was already suffering from multiple local issues and malpractices. Now the target based asset focus in MGNREGA is further damaging the essence of employment guarantee. The irony is that the quality of assets too haven’t improved and one can find poor quality and incomplete MGNREGA assets across the nation. In absence of a robust monitoring and grievance redress strategy, the condition of the programme can never be revived. The ministry has always been prompt in responding to the critics but highest officials never respond to the ground issues. While the workers across the nation demand higher wages, increase in work days and enhanced benefits, the officials keep their mouth shut.

The central government have allocated Rs.60000 crores for MGNREGA for 2019-20. The total budget for 2018-19 was Rs. 61084 crores. While independent activists, researchers and organizations have repeatedly claimed with data that MGNREGA cannot function properly with anything less than Rs.88000crores, this reduction in the budget has no logical explanation.

The world’s largest rural job scheme is going through a deep crisis. In the times when frequent reports of starvation deaths have shaken the nation, the rural development minister and the MGNREGA officials at the centre cannot shun from their responsibilities. With the general elections round the corner, BJP government needs to understand that 13crores job card holding families will be closely watching their next moves.

Courtesy: Counter Currents
 

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Bachcha Lal’s family in Banda, Uttar Pradesh, depend on his wages from MGNREGS work. Inadequate work, and delays in wage payment, have added to his problems.
 
“When the government first presented the MGNREGS to us, I thought that we’d get our money on time. I thought that I wouldn’t have to deal with abuse or unnecessary altercations, and that I’d be able to work well since it was a government initiative,” Lal told IndiaSpend. His experience could not have been more different. “We don’t get our wages on time. We could work for two days, but then remain unemployed for the next month or even the next year and a half or two years,” he said.
 
Launched in 2006, MGNREGS, the world’s largest rural jobs programme, guarantees 100 days of unskilled work to rural Indians such as Lal. It has 110 million active workers, and the wages it pays are an important source of income in Indian villages at a time when the farm sector is in crisis, more villagers are working as farm labour than as cultivators, and non-farm jobs are not enough to accommodate the large number of people entering the labour force.
 
Starting today, IndiaSpend will analyse the successes and failures of this scheme, and the challenges it faces, in a three-part series. This first part analyses budget allocations to find that despite heightened farm unrest, this year the government has set aside the least proportion of money for the scheme–48% of the budget of the rural development ministry–in the three years since 2016-17.
 
Reduced funding has resulted in 48% fewer projects getting completed over the six years to 2016. Although expenditure on wages now constitutes 73% of expenditure against the stipulated 60:40 wages-to-materials ratio under MGNREGS guidelines, delays in wage payment are frequent, as the second part will explore.
 
The final part will focus on how women in the state of Kerala have benefitted from MGNREGS, and what lessons that holds for policymakers.
 
This investigation is part of IndiaSpend’s series on the government’s performance on key flagship programmes in the run-up to the 2019 elections.
 
Inadequate funding
 
“There is massive under-funding of [MGNREGS] by the Centre leading to dilution of the programme,” Rajendran Narayanan, assistant professor at the School of Liberal Studies at Azim Premji University (APU), told IndiaSpend. He said allocation for MGNREGS as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) has steadily fallen–in 2010-11, it was 0.53% of GDP, and in 2017-18, 0.42%.
 
Adjusting for inflation and percentage of GDP (1.3-1.7%), the allocation for 2017-18 should have been no less than Rs 71,000 crore, Narayanan said. The actual allocation was Rs 48,000 crore.
 
Making this Rs 48,000 crore allocation, the government had claimed it was the highest ever. However, the programme had accumulated arrears of close to Rs 11,644 crore from the previous year that had to be paid, Narayanan said, adding that after taking out the arrears, the allocation amounted to about Rs 36,000 crore.
 
The allocation for the current year, 2018-19, is no more than last year’s revised estimate (additional funds requested beyond the budget allocation to meet excess expenditure) of Rs 55,000 crore.
 
As a proportion of the rural development ministry’s expenditure, too, MGNREGS spending is now the lowest in three years. In 2012-13, the share of MGNREGS was 55% of the ministry’s allocation. Since then, it has dropped seven percentage points to 48%.
 
The central government is responsible for 96% of MGNREGS implementation costs, as per the scheme guidelines: it pays the wages for unskilled and semi-skilled labour, and up to three-fourths of the cost of materials used. The state governments pay the unemployment allowance and the remaining cost of materials.
 
An applicant is entitled to an unemployment allowance if they are not given work within 15 days of their application being received. The allowance is at least one-fourth the wage rate for the first 30 days and not less than half the wage rate for the remaining period of the financial year.
 
Between 2012-13 and 2017-18, no more than 10% of households got 100 days of employment each fiscal year, defeating the professed objective of enhancing livelihood security in rural areas.
 
In 2017-18, the households provided 100 days of employment fell further by four percentage points to 6%, compared with 2012-13, as per figures available on April 28, 2018.
 

Source: MGNREGA Dashboard
*Figures have been rounded off
 
When MGNREGS expenditure overshoots the allocation by the central government, state governments make up the shortfall, which becomes a ‘pending liability’ for the Centre–the arrears mentioned above–this brief from Accountability Initiative explains. The cumulative liabilities until 2017-18 amounted to Rs 12,601 crore, twice the liabilities of Rs 6,355 crore in 2015-16.
 

Source: Accountability Initiative, 2018, Accountability Initiative, 2012
*Budget Estimate 2018-19
 
Assets created are useful, but few projects get completed
 
The scheme is designed to generate employment and create durable assets in rural areas.
 
With expenditure overshooting allocated budget, asset creation has been affected, largely due to payment delays.
 
“I do digging work mostly [under MGNREGS]. I worked as a farm labourer before this,” Lal told IndiaSpend in November 2017. Since MGNREGS employs unskilled manual labour, workers like him are often involved in digging-related works for soil conservation, horticulture, creation of sheds and farm ponds, etc.  
 
 
All such works fall under the natural resource management (NRM) component of MGNREGS, which account for 100 of the 153 kinds of projects that can be undertaken under the scheme. Of all NRM projects, 71 are water-related works such as creating recharge wells, water harvesting structures and check dams.
 
Thanks to NRM projects, 78% of households reported an increase in the water table, ranging from 30% in Muktsar in Punjab to 95% in Vizianagaram in Andhra Pradesh, according to a 2017 study of 30 districts in 29 states conducted by the Institute of Economic Growth, a think-tank.
 
Further, 66% of households said there was more fodder available after water-conservation projects on public and private lands belonging to marginal and small farmers (farmers who cultivate up to 2.5 acres and 5 acres of land, respectively).
 
Verification of 926 MGNREGS wells across six randomly selected districts in Jharkhand found that 60% of sanctioned MGNREGS wells were completed, according to this May 2016 Economic and Political Weekly report. Nearly 95% of completed wells were being utilised for irrigation, leading to a near tripling of agricultural income.
 
“Assets do get created on the lands of small and marginal farmers,” APU’s Narayanan said, “For example, land leveling is something that a farmer can requisition from the gram panchayat. It isn’t true that only large farm owners are benefiting from the scheme.”
 
However, nearly 12% of all sanctioned wells were abandoned before completion reportedly due to payment-related issues, the report said.
 
The scheme is designed so that material ratios are lower than labour or wage costs, Avani Kapur, director of Accountability Initiative, told IndiaSpend, citing as examples works such as water conservation, pond digging and tree plantation that require little material input. “Programmes in which material costs are significant, such as sanitation or housing, are usually run as convergence programmes with existing schemes,” she said.    
 
The gram sabha (village council) selects the works to be undertaken in the panchayat, and is expected to uphold the spirit of MGNREGS’ demand-driven approach. Often, this is not the case, however.
 
“If asset creation becomes targets-based and top-down, then one will hazard creating assets that are not useful,” said Narayanan, “How can somebody sitting in the state capital know or decide what is best for a gram panchayat that is far away?” The law under which MGNREGS operates clearly intended a gram panchayat-led, demand-driven scheme, he added.
 
At the same time, the quality of works has also been a cause for concern. One of the fallouts of low fund allocation of late has been that the recommended labour-to-material ratio of 60:40 has not been maintained.

The percentage of water conservation and water harvesting projects completed fell from 57% in 2009-10 to 2.5% in 2016-17. “Once you close a work officially, it becomes very hard to reopen (you’ll have to get three types of sanction–technical, administrative and financial). That is one reason for the percentage of works completed to remain low,” said Reetika Khera, an economics professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi.
 
The proportion of works completed has mostly remained below 50% through the 12 years of MGNREGS, and has been falling in recent years. In 2016-17, work completed dropped nearly 13 percentage points to 2.74%, from 15.6% the previous year. The present allocation is unlikely to improve the situation.
 
Wages unpaid
 
“They owe me Rs 6,000 for the work I have done,” said Sukhrani, a 50-year-old woman who goes by one name, sitting on a charpai (string bed) in her small, unplastered home in Mavai village in Banda district. She said two people in her family have enrolled under MGNREGS. “It’s been two months we haven’t been able to afford milk. We scrounge and borrow to feed ourselves. We don’t even have slippers,” she said, “Sometimes we sell or rent parts of our field.” 
 
 
Delays in wage payment have been a constant throughout MGNREGS implementation. The guidelines recommend that wages be paid within 15 days of closing of the ‘muster roll’, the attendance register for a site.
 
However, a recent study by Azim Premji University has found that 78% of payments were not made on time, and as many as 45% payments did not include compensation for delayed payment as per guidelines.
 
Government data show the percentage of wages unpaid increased from 63.5% in February 2018 to 85.5% in March 2018 to 99% in April 2018, which part two of this series will explore in greater detail.
 
This is the first of a three-part series on the successes and failures of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
 
Next: Despite ‘Record’ Allocation, 59% MGNREGS Wages Due Remained Unpaid In April 2018  
 
(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. Paliath is a policy analyst with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

The post As Demand For Rural Jobs Rises, Government Curtails Funding For Key Employment Scheme appeared first on SabrangIndia.

With the increasing centralisation of implementation of MGNREGS due to electronic transfer of funds, the onus of paying timely wages lies largely with the Central government. This was proposed as a way to ease and quicken wage payments, but has been acting in the exact opposite manner. Fund Transfer Orders (FTOs) need to be approved by the Centre before any payment can be made. 100% of the FTOs are pending approval from the centre for the aforementioned 19 states. 

The centralized electronic method of the payment process was touted as a step taken for the benefit of the workers, but in reality it has given more power and control of the expenses and implementation of the scheme to the Centre. 

According to the rules of the scheme, in case of unavailability of work or delay in payments, workers have to be compensated. These compensations are nowhere to be seen. The Supreme Court had ordered the government to pay all the due compensation, but only Rs. 3.6 crore of the pending Rs. 34.7 crore was paid. Last year, the compensation amount was Rs. 1200 crore. But little of it reached the workers.

The government is also fast running out of funds for MGNREGS. Almost 88% of the funds assigned for the scheme are already exhausted. Only Rs. 6,000 crore of the budget allocation of Rs. 48,000 crore is left, with six months remaining in the financial year. The Ministry of Rural Development has requested supplementary funds of Rs 17,600 crore, but it is highly unlikely that the entire amount will be approved. In any case, the additional funds will not be disbursed before January of next year. 

The other dismaying part of MGNREGS is the falling number of people it is employing. A significant proportion of rural families are being refused employment under the scheme which was supposed to guarantee it. About 6.59 crore people applied for employment under MGNREGS this year, out of which only 5.82 crores were given work. This means more than 77 lakh people or 12% have been denied employment till now. 

MGNREGS serves as not only as an employment scheme, but a way for important infrastructure to be built in rural areas. People employed under the scheme undertake construction of roads, water tanks, canals, and other such necessities. Close to 70% of the projects are related to water conservation, irrigation, and land development, which are crucial in the face of droughts and other results of the agrarian crises. But the completion rate of these projects has been declining drastically. According to data on the website of Ministry of Rural Development which tracks the progress of MGNREGS projects, only 8% of the projects have been completed this year till October 12. This is down from a completion rate of 97% in 2014-15. Since April 2014, 1.04 crore projects have not been completed.

The present government has shown apathy towards the rural employment guarantee scheme right from the beginning, with statements suggesting it might be scrapped altogether. It was forced to continue with it because of massive protests in 2014. Yet, the govt. continues to sabotage it through a variety of underhand machinations. Given the severe employment crisis in the country, the scheme serves as a major support for lakhs of families. Its slow strangulation by the govt. is bound to have a destructive effect on the lives of crores.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in
 

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