Facts flirt with fiction here

TRACKING NREGP PART-II

While there is no guarantee of jobs in the rural job guarantee programme in Uttar Pradesh, facts about NREGP seem to be programmed to suit everyone concerned in the state and at the Centre, except the poor job seekers.

As per figures of the Rural Development Ministry, 32 lakh job cards have been made in the 22 districts of the state. But the NGO SEWA found that in Barabanki district's 25 gram panchayats in Nindura block, the figures provided to the Centre by the Block Development Officer's office are different from the figures available with the pradhans in each of these villages.

The pradhans' figures show that in all 2,488 job cards have been given so far and 484 man days generated, in which 1,059 people worked. But the Nindura BDO's file shows the figure as 6,112 cards, 849 workers and 14,768 man days!

Taking specific cases, Audar gram panchayat has given away 105 job cards, according to its pradhan. But the BDO puts the figure at 436!

Pindsava gram panchayat has 80 job cards. The BDO's entry is 328. While the pradhan claims to have provided only 20 man days, the BDO's entry inflates it to 700 man days. Mohsund gram panchayat has given 240 cards according to the pradhan. But the BDO gives the figure as 436.

The 15 man days modestly claimed by the panchayat pradhan turn into 540 man days in the BDO's file.

Nindura block has 76 panchayats, while SEWA works in only 25, says Yogendra Shukla, project officer of the NGO who did the comparative study in EGA statistics at panchayat and block levels.

In Congress President Sonia Gandhi's constituency Rae Bareilly, however, this contradiction is absent in the block surveyed by SEWA.

The Rural Development Ministry has been regularly updating its figures based on the data sent by the governments. The ministry, however, is optimistic.

"We have an MIS designed to capture data at the gram panchayat level. So NREGP is on the right track," says joint secretary Amita Sharma.

"Many states like Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh are beginning to feed data from panchayat level despite problems of electricity, while Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand haven't started MIS at all," she says.