Central allocation for the Mahatama Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) has been falling in recent years, with this year recording the steepest decline.
Money released for the scheme fell from Rs 35,242 crore last year to Rs 21,441 crore this year, while expenditure has gone down from Rs 39,000 crore last year to Rs 20,000 crore as of January-end.
The average workdays under the scheme, which provides a legal entitlement of 100 days of employment a year to rural citizens who demand it, also fell from 43.51 same period last year to 32.01 days this year at the end of January.
The fall in fund releases and workdays has been most stark in Uttar Pradesh where work fell from 58.64 last year to 29.97 this year. In Rajasthan, it fell from 67.57 last year to 36.50 this year; West Bengal saw a dip from 44 last year to 13 this year and Mizoram saw a decline from 90 last year to 37 this year.
Rural Development Ministry officials say it is too early to compare the annual performances. They attributed the fall in workdays and expenditure to rains. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh attributed the “low demand” for work in Rajasthan to a good harvest.
The trend is making many in civil society see red. Activists say the government may reduce the budget for MNREGS by projecting the scheme as a low spender and generally attracting little demand.
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Activist Nikhil De, for instance, does not accept the theory of low demand for work. He cites the instance of a panchayat in Bharatpur in Rajasthan where he was told by panchayat and district officials that no one wanted work and hence no MNREGS project was running there. “However, when we called the villagers and asked them how many would want to work and give their demand letters, 400 hands went up,” De added.
He suggests that the demand is being suppressed by keeping the terms of work unattractive. “Wages are delayed and they are lower than the minimum wages, and very rarely do people get work. That is the surest way to drive away workers,” he says.
Former member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council, Ashwani Kumar, says the low number of workdays being seen across the country is the unintended result of the stress being given to transparency and accountability. “Officials are perhaps too scared to take up any project,” Kumar said.
NCPRI, of which Nikhil De and Aruna Roy are members, states on the sixth anniversary of NREG Act that the two most basic entitlements in the scheme are 100 days of work and the minimum wages; and both these entitlements are under serious threat and that today the scheme is at the mercy of groups with vested interest. Various groups have come to realise that big money is at stake in MNREGS and hence they have started to aggressively combat any accountability measures sought to be implemented by the government or the people. “State governments like Jharkhand and Rajasthan have remained silent spectators to the open display of fraud, and social audits have not been allowed to develop roots in any state except in Andhra Pradesh,” the NCPRI adds.
Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has promised revamp of the scheme this month while there has been an initiative to link MNREGS to regular auditing by the Comptroller and Auditor General. Anuradha Talwar, who has been organising MNREGS workers into unions in Bengal, gheraoed state rural development minister Subrato Mukherji last week along with 200 workers demanding better implementation of the scheme. “He said he was helpless because money and rules were coming from the Centre,” Talwar says.
Talwar blames the state for not applying its mind. Money, she says, has been coming for the scheme. The state did best in 2009-10 when workdays went up to 44 but now little is happening, she adds. Talwar agrees that the Government may want to reduce the budget citing the widespread fall in workdays and expenditure on the scheme.
The Planning Commission has chosen not to increase the allocation for MNREGS in the 12th Plan. “While an increase in the plan outlay is ruled out, we hope there is no decrease,” she adds.