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DAILY NEWS ANALYSIS
31 October, 2021
5 Min Read
Lowered outlay for MGNREGA, rural guarantee scheme has led to used up allocation and wage delays.
MGNREGS as a scheme, alleviates distress in rural areas in the following way:
Way Forward
The Union Government must ensure that the allocation is adequate for wage payments to be done and for demand to be met in the remaining months of this financial year, as MGNREGA is crucial for rural economy and development, where almost 68.8% of country’s population reside.
Source: The Hindu
30 October, 2021
5 Min Read
Context: This topic is important for UPSC Prelims and GS paper 2.
MGNREGA is important for rural development. It plays a critical role in physical and social infrastructure development in rural areas.
The important roles of the state government in executing the MGNREGA scheme are:
The State Employment Guarantee Council is responsible to advise the state government for the implementation of the MGNREG scheme. Some important functions of SEGC under MNREGS are:
The office of the Ombudsman is vested with the following powers in order to redress grievances under MGNREGA:
1. Goal 1- poverty alleviation
2. Goal 2- elimination of hunger
3. Goal 3- Health and Sanitation
4. Goal 5 - Gender equality
5. Goal 8- Decent work and Economic Growth
6. Goal 9- Infrastructure creation
7. Goal 10- Reduced Inequality
1) Ridiculously low wage rate: Currently, MNREGS wage rates of 17 states are less than the corresponding state minimum wages. Various judgments have upheld that the wage rate cannot be less than the minimum agricultural wage rate of the state. The ridiculously low wage rates have resulted in a lack of interest among workers in working for Mahatma Gandhi NREGA schemes, making way for contractors and middlemen to take control, locally.
2) Insufficient budget allocation: MGNREGA’s success at the ground level is subject to proper and uninterrupted fund flow to the states. Thrice in the last year and once this year, funds have dried up in states due to lack of “mother sanctions” from the Central government which hampers the work in peak season. Almost every year, more than 80 percent of funds get exhausted within the first six months. Thus, the government’s claim of “record allocation” does not hold true in real terms. It has rather decreased as pending liabilities of the last year are also included in the current budget. Moreover, the fund allocation is insufficient to ensure proper implementation on the ground.
3) Regular payment delays: The Union Ministry of Rural Development considers wages paid once the FTO (Fund Transfer Order) is signed by the second signatory. However, delays take place even in the processing of signed FTOs, for which the Management Information System (MIS) does not calculate compensation. Despite the order of the Supreme Court and GO (Government Order) by the Union Ministry of Finance, no provision has yet been worked out in the MIS for the calculation of full wage delays and payment of compensation for the same. Hence, the government’s claims of 92 percent on-time payments generation are misguided. Even a hasty survey on the ground will show that payments are regularly delayed.
4) Workers penalized for administrative lapses: The ministry withholds wage payments for workers of states that do not meet administrative requirements within the stipulated time period (for instance, submission of the previous financial year’s audited fund statements, utilization certificates, bank reconciliation certificates, etc). There is no logical or legal explanation for this bizarre arrangement. It is beyond any logic as to why workers would be penalized for administrative lapses.
5) The banking puzzle: The rural banks are highly de-capacitated in terms of staff and infrastructure and thus always remain hugely crowded. The workers normally have to visit the banks more than once to withdraw their wages. Due to the great rush and poor infrastructure, the bank passbooks are not updated in many cases. Often, the workers do not get their wages during times of need due to the hassle and the cost involved in getting wages from the bank.
6) Faulty MIS data: The increase in corruption and weakening accountability has roots in the excessive dependence of implementation of MNREGS on technology (real-time MIS being one of them). There is a growing pile of evidence on how real-time MIS has made MNREGS less transparent for workers, reduced accountability of frontline functionaries, and aided in the centralization of the programme.
7) Non-payment of unemployment allowance: There are a huge number of unemployment allowances being shown in the MIS currently. But inaction from the Central government in ensuring payments of the same has shown that the government wants to use the MIS as per its convenience and is not honouring its own database.
8) Genuine job cards being deleted to meet 100% DBT targets: Genuine job cards are being randomly deleted as there is a huge administrative pressure to meet 100 percent Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) implementation targets in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. In states like Jharkhand, there are multiple examples where the districts had later requested to resume job cards after civil society interventions into the matter. While the government has been boasting about Aadhar-based savings, the reality is that a huge number of genuine job cards and ration cards are getting deleted and genuine people have been deprived of their due entitlements.
9) Too much centralisation weakening local governance: A real-time MIS-based implementation and a centralised payment system have further left the representatives of the Panchayati Raj Institutions with no role in implementation, monitoring, and grievance redress of MGNREGA schemes. It has become a burden as they hardly have any power to resolve issues or make payments. The over-centralisation of the scheme has completely depoliticised the implementation of MNREGS and local accountabilities have been completely diminished.
10) Administration not honouring local priorities: Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act could be a tool to establish decentralised governance. But, with the administration almost dictating its implementation, it is a burden for the people and especially for the local elected representatives. The governments always use the bottom-up people’s planning strategy to gain political mileage but never honour local priorities while implementing the schemes. Further linking MNREGS to the construction of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), individual household toilets, Anganwadi centres and rural ‘haats’ have been destroying the spirit of the programme, and gram sabhas and gram panchayats’ plans are never honoured. This is a blatant violation of the Act as well.
The government is relying heavily on the MIS to show that "All is well", while it should actually review its MIS system itself and correct the present gaps in implementation. The MIS data presently is not a true measure of performance in MNREGS as a MIS-based implementation, without a robust leakage control mechanism, can only give out faulty data and misguiding impression.
To ensure effective rural development, all the glitches in the implementation of Mahatma Gandhi NREGA must be removed. It must be implemented as per demand with the proactive role by the Panchayat and GRAM Sabha. Allocation of funds from both centre and state must ensure timely payments for keeping up with the rural demand. MGNREGA emerged as a major shock absorber of COVID19 impacts on rural areas, thus has proved its critical role to solve rural problems particularly unemployment.
Source: The Hindu
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