Latest figures published about the MNREGA are disquieting. Funding has been slashed by about half, states have wage bills they cannot clear because of delays in disbursements by the Centre, and hardly any state has managed to provide the mandated 100 days per year to this job card-holders in any year since its inception. The slack implementation and leakages have affected the poor, and this is bad news in a year when the weather has played havoc , writes Mahesh Vijapurkar
During his 18-year chairmanship of the Maharashtra Legislative Council (1960-78), Gandhian politician VS Page wielded influence on the government but it was an uphill task to persuade VP Naik, the Chief Minister, to launch a pro-poor scheme. The idea was simple, already demonstrated in Tasgaon taluk of Sangli district, Tasgaon is where farm labour and even farmers during droughts could seek and get work, be it breaking stones on the roadsides. It’s the Employment Guarantee Scheme, funded by a cess on salaries of the employed in the formal sector, and others paying sales tax.
In the evening of his life, seeing its mal-administration – mainly corruption and insensitivity – he had once lamented, “I’d rather see the shradh of my baby than bear it”. It had gone through several changes, including the surreptitious use of contractors and machinery. Leakages in wages hurt him. Most of the unused funds disappeared into a black hole instead of keeping in an escrow as a statute required. No one knows where over Rs 15,000 cr , a conservative estimate at that, disappeared, though officially, it is “unspent, but unavailable.” EGS’ broad contours were the model for MNREGA.
This fall back is not available to other states though it must be pointed out that even Maharashtra complains the allocations from the Centre have been delayed. It can write cheques on the humungous unspent fund sums but it dare not because they have been quietly parcelled away into other uses. The state, as required under the 1976 law governing EGS, the state continues to provide a matching grant equal to the levy on the employed and sales tax, but it is all on paper, obviously.
Latest figures published about the MNREGA are as disquieting as the EGS was to Page. Funding has been slashed by about half, states have wage bills they cannot clear because of delays in disbursements by the Centre, and hardly any state has managed to provide the mandated 100 days per year to this job card-holders in any year since its inception. However, slack implementation and leakages have affected the poor, and this is bad news in a year when the weather has played havoc – untimely rains, hailstorms etc.
If the governments use the ploy of saying the demand for work is diminishing, it would be a lie because its unreliability can be one major cause for driving people to look for alternative livelihoods which in most cases mean migration to the nearest urban location. Bigger the cities, stronger the attraction for they can offer something or the other to live yet just another day. As summer intensifies, and farm work disappears even for the person who is committed to a farmer, the dilution or absence of MNREGA will be felt acutely.
Reports of farmer suicides from across the country other than Vidarbha, considered the suicide hotspot of the country, mainly because of unrelenting media attention on Vidarbha, shows that it is not just the farm hands but the farmers themselves are in acute distress. Scarcity of water, consequently the impact on farming, grazing lands and fodder, and the burden of farm animals move into a cycle of woes due to which the entire rural economy goes into a spin.
Containing consequence is huge, even if it is by now a routine event calling for steps, and Maharashtra legislature has heard complaints about how low-level officials and banks in connivance have delayed payments cleared for normal drought relief to farmers. This is something possible in all sectors where the state has to provide for the victims of situations not of their own making, and in no state is MNREGA from such practices- inefficiency to rent -seeking.
No doubt, the EGS in Maharashtra, which, theoretically comes into play after the MNREGA, and it, has no moral right whatsoever to complain about truncated allocations or even slow dispersal by the Centre but other states do not have that scope. If the Centre does not pay the bills in time, the states carry the cross and get blamed which is unfortunate. New Delhi cannot remain at an arm’s length from the consequences of downsizing the statutory programme.
Telangana State police paid a tearful farewell to constable Nagaraju who died fighting two suspected members of the banned Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) in Saturday encounter in Nalgonda district.
