A few month ago, when Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav told Parliament the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) should be scrapped, he was expressing desperation at the state's failure to implement a scheme aimed at helping the poor in rural areas.
Probably, he was also thinking of the fact that the scheme was virtually bankrupt in his state---not only had it failed to pay wages to workers on time, it had also been hauled up in court for not paying the salaries of administrative staff hired under the scheme.
A fortnight ago, the Lucknow High Court had asked the state government to pay the salaries of about 40,000 personnel, including gram rozgar sewaks, technical assistants and computer assistants, whose wages were pending for eight months to two years, across districts. The state said the funds meant for salaries had been spent by district administrations for other purposes.
Thousands of these workers whose salaries are pending are set to protest in Delhi.
Raghunath Patel, president of the Uttar Pradesh Technical Association of MGNREGS and a junior engineer employed under the scheme in Banda district, says he hasn't been paid for a year. Junior engineers in Gonda, Pratapgarh and Varanasi, where workers have gone to court against the state, haven't been paid for two years.
The district administration had admitted the money meant for these salaries was used for its fuel expenses, said Patel. Salaries are paid out of the six per cent administrative costs allowed under MGNREGS. Since the total allocation for the scheme in the state had halved from Rs 5,000 crore in the past year, the administrative cost allocation had also been cut to half, said Sanjay Dixit, a Congress leader from the state and former member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council. Also, the Centre has cut the administrative cost allocation from six per cent to five per cent, setting one per cent aside for audit costs.
Mulayam Singh Yadav's demand to scrap the scheme is based on his conclusion that the scheme is the root of corruption in the state and that district officials are making off with money meant for the poor. As the former chief minister's statement comes at a time when his own party is in power and his son is the chief minister, there is a desperate need of a review of the working of the scheme under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which promises 100 days of wage employment to the rural poor.
The workers hired to run MGNREGS are not just denied salaries, they are also paid below-minimum wages. While a junior engineer such as Patel gets Rs 8,000 a month, Madhya Pradesh pays Rs 21,000, Rajasthan pays Rs 12,000 and Bihar pays Rs 11,000 a month to technical assistants. While Uttar Pradesh pays gram rozgar sewaks Rs 3,500 a month, Bihar pays Rs 5,000 and Madhya Pradesh Rs 8,000.
K S Gopal, social scientist and an MGNREGS activist based in Andhra Pradesh, says the problem is a shortage of funds in states. This forces states to provide less work, which reduces the funds further. Therefore, the percentage of funds allowed for administrative costs comes down, and salaries aren't paid, he says.
Whether the scheme should continue in its current form, as a central top-down model, is a question that needs to be looked into; Mulayam Singh Yadav's cry of desperation deserves attention. Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh's response to this was Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had often written to him, seeking funds for the scheme; this showed the chief minister didn't agree with his father.
However, the fact that a state has to write to a central minister for funds often is another measure of the same desperation.
According to a study by a parliamentary standing committee, MGNREGS has fared the worst in states such as Bihar, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, with Uttar Pradesh's average workdays a household standing at a dismal 26. If the scheme can't help the poor, it either needs urgent reform, as the committee suggested, or should be wound up, as proposed by Yadav.
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
