(Mani Shankar Aiyar is a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha.)To the insult he inflicted on Gandhiji's name by launching his Swachch Bharat Abhiyan without even mentioning the Mahatma's principled insistence on panchayats as the medium of the message, Modi has now added injury by tinkering with the National Rural Employment Programme being run in the name of Mahatma Gandhi (MGNREGA).
There is a great deal that is right with MGNREGA. Hunger is the single worst bane in the life of the poor, especially the destitute. MGNREGA directly attacks hunger by providing the supplementary income that bridges the gap between destitution and poverty. The latest Global Hunger Index shows that India has slashed malnutrition rates by nearly 15 per cent since MGNREGA was launched - the improvement in nutrition levels among mothers has translated, as it would, into better nutrition levels for their children.
Other social indicators have also shown improvement. This is essentially because women are the prime beneficiaries of the programme, and the substantial increase in their own disposal income has bettered indices across a wide range of measures. Moreover, by providing employment opportunities to women when the family is stalked by economic uncertainty, MGNREGA has enhanced the dignity and role of women as the principal providers for the family. Above all, as MGNREGA is the most important programme run by the Panchayats, inclusive growth has been secured through a participative model that, ideally, runs from the sarpanch to the ward members of the panchayat and the community as a whole in their gram sabhas and ward sabhas.
Yet, there are many shortcomings. Foremost is that the average number of days for which employment is provided is under half the prescribed number of 100 days, principally because, by a fiscal sleight of hand, less than half the required funds are provided through the budget. This gaping lacuna in implementation is covered up by claiming that the programme is "demand-based" - that is, additional funds will be made available in keeping with additional "demand" for employment. But as no simple and transparent method has been devised of communicating pent-up demand, particularly from an individual in need, there is no practical avenue for people to demand further employment. Therefore, the availability of funds determines the amount of work offered, rather than the other way round, and those in further need are unable to press their demand for work. In other words, instead of being a "rights-based" programme, where anyone needing work is immediately given work (within the ceiling of one hundred days), the programme is run as a "scheme" in which the available budget translates into the work-days available and when that quota of work-days is exhausted, generally at well below a hundred days, there is no automatic enhancement of the budget.
Moreover, while the Central legislation provides for the payment of a dole if employment is not made available within 15 days of work being demanded, the burden of paying the dole has been devolved on State governments, almost none of which have been prepared to bear the burden, with the result that this key provision has remained a dead letter. There is no incentive to ensure that all who ask for 100 days of work are given work. Combined with poor administration in several of the states where MGNREGA work is most needed, such as UP, Bihar, MP and Orissa, the percentage share of households actually securing 100 days' work is as low as 6%-10%, when it is intuitively obvious that these are precisely the states where work is most needed but not being provided.
There are other specific issues. Notwithstanding the provisions of the legislation, in many states, particularly poor performers such as Uttar Pradesh, panchayats are not being involved, only the sarpach is, thus setting up a nefarious nexus between the lower bureaucracy and the sarpanch to the detriment of the community. Rotation of work between sites often makes employment location-specific instead of being available to anyone in the panchayat, irrespective of the locality in the panchayat where the person lives. Community involvement in planning projects for execution under MGNREGA is provided for in the legislation, but is often not reflected in practice, making MGNREGA bureaucracy-planned and bureaucracy-implemented, in blatant violation of both the letter and the spirit of the legislation.
Moreover, MGNREGA is an "employment-creation" programme, not an "asset-creation" programme. For asset creation, there are several other schemes. That is why the success or otherwise of MGNREGA must be measured in terms of employment opportunities offered, not in terms of assets created. Alternatively, MGNREGA could be deployed for the labour component of asset-creation programmes. Why, it should even be possible to link private asset-creation, especially in the fields of small and marginal farmers, with MGNREGA.
Instead of dealing with these real issues of MGNREGA, the Modi government has gone off on a tangent. First, it wants to change the ratio of labour to materials to increase the use of machinery and supplies without realizing that every rupee taken from employment to pay for materials reduces the funds available for employment - and this further cuts the already low level of employment being offered under the programme. To emphasise asset-creation at the expense of employment-creation is to undermine the very logic of this hugely popular and desperately needed programme. Yet, mindlessly, this is precisely what the Modi government is contemplating.
Worse, the Modi government plans to restrict the programme to designated "backward" areas, constituting about a third of the country. This is ridiculous. For one thing, there is already a pretty successful Backward Regions Grant Fund. It requires strengthening. Additional funds for backward areas development should be made available to this Fund. Why shift the burden to MGNREGA?
More fundamentally, the programme in Gandhi's name is targetted at the individual in need, not the place of his or her residence. There is no part of India where the destitute and the poor do not live. The proportion may be higher in some places than in others. But those in need are everywhere. To deprive people of employment merely because they happen to live in the wrong place is to inflict the gravest injustice on them for no fault of their own.
Finally, the beauty of MGNREGA has lain in the self-identification of the beneficiaries. Anyone willing to undertake the hard, backbreaking, unskilled work involved in MGNREA, toiling in the boiling sun for the pittance required to keep body and soul together, has been the only criterion for making work available. There are no tiresome, discriminatory identification procedures pockmarked with corruption and nepotism. The Modi innovation will re-introduce patronage networks to run the programme.
No wonder a concerned group of over 20 top economists and social activists led by Jean Dreze has written to Modi begging him to reconsider. Their views are backed by international experts like Martin Ravaillon. Behind them is a phalanx of those like me who have been involved with the programme since its conception. Instead of consulting those in the know about what changes to make, Modi has shot off on his own, to the detriment of the interests of the poor and the destitute and the dismay of poor women all over rural India. Modi must be stopped in his tracks before he wreaks further havoc. Let us not forget that, under his watch, Gujarat was among the worst-performing MGNREGA states.
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