National Rural Employment Guarantee Act

2008

National Rural Employment Guarantee Act Analysis & Recommendations

Submitted By: Aarti Utreja – 2008 001 Devesh Gupta – 2008 012 Mugdha Lakhakar – 2008 024 Rohit Vashisht – 2008 043 Rajiv Trivedi – 2008 050

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005

Acknowlegdement We would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Mihir Mahapatra, our Course Lecturer for Macro Economics for giving us this wonderful opportunity to take this project on the “National Rural Employment Guarantee Act” and thereby enhance our learning on Macro Economic issues of interest. We also express our sincere thanks to Prof. Raghuveer Vernekar for extending his invaluable help in formulating the project report and completion of the project. Last but not the least; we extend our heartfelt thanks to the almighty for the successful completion of the project. We look forward to doing some quality learning of this kind in future as well.

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The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005

Table of Contents Acknowlegdement ...................................................................... 2 Executive Summary ................................................................... 4 Introduction ............................................................................... 5 Objective: ................................................................................... 5 Objective of the Study ................................................................ 6 Data and Methodology................................................................ 6 History Behind NREGA............................................................... 7 Unique Features ......................................................................... 9 Structure of NREGA ................................................................. 11 Problems in Implementation ..................................................... 15 Recommendations .................................................................... 19 Conclusion ............................................................................... 22 References ................................................................................ 23

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The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005

Executive Summary Our “Father of The Nation” Gandhiji once said that the heart of India lies in the rural areas. He said this because he had understood the fact that a major part of India‟s population lies in the rural India. If India as a nation had to survive and grow, it was important that the rural India contributes to it. Sixty two years have passed since we became independent. But this fact has not come to the mind of any Government or rather one can say that no one ever took a note of what our “Father of The Nation” had said. The so called leaders of our nation remember the rural India and its problems only once in every 5 years i.e. when the elections are on their head. But finally after so many years had passed, there came one law in 2005, to be implemented in 2006, the “National Rural Employment Guarantee Act” that was focused towards the rural India. There were many schemes that came before as well for the rural India but this was different. It was an Act. It made the providing of jobs a duty for Government and for the job -seeker - a right. Here is what one of the credible organizations had to say about this act: “Every person who digs a pond renovates an irrigational canal and plants a tree contributes a bit to poverty alleviation in India. Under NREGA, more than one percent of India’s population would have done that in the last ten months. That is the scheme’s development potential.”

A report by Centre for Science and Environment

This report is sincere effort towards analysing an Act that has the potential to awaken the rural India (as can be seen in the above statem ent). The report talks about the Act, its unique features, its procedure for implementation, the problems that it has faced during the last two years and the suggestions that would lead it to a good future.

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The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005

Introduction On February 2, 2006, amid great hype and hope, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) came into force in 200 of India’s most backward districts. In the year 2007, it was extended to cover another 130 districts and with effect from April 1, 2008, the Act is to cover all of rural India. This is the largest ever public employment programme visualised in human history1. (Pramathesh Ambasta, 2008) The Act provides: 1. A legal guarantee of 100 days of wage employment in a year to any adult who resides in a rural area and who is willing to do unskilled manual work at the minimum wage rate. 2. He will be given a wage equal to the minimum wage for the agriculture labourers in the State. In any case, it cannot be lesser than Rs.60 per day. 3. The work will be within 5 km from the applicant’s residence. In case of a distance of more than 5 km, travel allowance will be paid. 4. In case the applicant is unable to get work within 15 days of submission of the application for work or from the date when work is sought whichever is earlier, he will be eligible to get an unemployment allowance.

Objective2: The basic objective of this Act is to provide for the enhancement of livelihood security of the households in rural areas of the country by providing at least one hundred days of guaranteed wage employment in every financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.

1 2

Source : Economic & Political Weekly Article,2008 Source : National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005

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Objective of the Study The basic objective of our report is to go deep in and study a national Act that we believe has potential to change the life of people of rural India. This scheme talks about providing a fixed source of money to people in rural India, a concept totally unheard in the streets of India. Thus, it becomes important to study the Act, its unique features and approach of implementation. But the biggest problem with programs of Indian Government is not the planning but implementation. Thus, we also need to analyse if the scheme has produced results as expected during the last two years.

Data and Methodology Our study is mainly based on the secondary data that was gathered from various Government agency sites as well as reports from individual journals, magazines, etc. The details regarding the reports refereed to are mentioned in the References (given at the end of this report). Here we would like to mention with deep regret that Government sites do not provide the data that as a citizen of India one should have access to. The reports are available on the site but they cannot be opened simply because the links do not work. Therefore, we had to rely more or less on the reports provided by private parties and other government bodies such as Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Centre of Science and Environment, Central Statistical Organization, etc.

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History Behind NREGA The first set of programmes, the National Rural Employment Programme and the Rural Landless Employment Programme, began in the 1970s as clones of the Maharashtra EGS. In 1989, the Rajiv Gandhi government clubbed the two schemes into one, revamped the schemes and decided the implementation would be done through the panchayati raj institutions (village-level elected institutions). Thus born the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY); but it was totally different. The bureaucratic machinery was bypassed; funds would be deposited in the accounts of each village institution responsible for planning development activities used to create employment creation, and overseeing implementation. The scheme began but it was never given a chance to succeed. In reality, JRY was perhaps an idea before its time (See Box: Rural wage employment programmes in India).

In 1990, when prime minister V P Singh ambushed the Rajiv Gandhi government over the Bofors gun scandal, the election call was a promise to „guarantee‟ Maharashtra-type employment for all. Instead the next government lead by Narasimha Rao diluted what existed. By 1993, JRY received little political leadership or attention3. It was agreed (from largely anecdotal and some official reports) that the scheme, controlled by people‟s representatives, was leading to increased corruption and even greater inefficiency in delivery. Therefore, it needed to be re-vamped. In 1993, the Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS) was launched. Now, half the allocated funds for rural employment would be passed through the bureaucracy, not the panchayati raj institutions. The big brother was back in business, to the tune of roughly Rs 2,000 crore each year.

In April 2002 another re-naming took place. This time the two schemes - JRY and EAS -were merged to create the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yogana ( SGRY). Its spending, too, was divided between the panchayati raj institutions and the administration. Incidentally, in the National Democratic Alliance period the name of JRY had been changed into the Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yogana (JGSY). A component of SGRY provided foodgrain to calamitystricken states for relief work. Now the cost increased to about Rs 4,000 crore per year. Then came the semi-final reincarnation. In late 2004, the National

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Source: An Ecological Act : A Backgrounder to NREGA by Centre for Science and Environment (CSE)

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Food for Work Programme (NFWP) was launched, targeting 150 backward districts. These districts were identified through a task force set up by the ministry of rural development, which used three variables to compute „backwardness‟ - agricultural productivity per worker, agricultural wage rate and scheduled caste and schedule tribe population in the district. This programme was to be implemented through attention and a menu of “labour- intensive projects” would be prepared, to be undertaken over a five-year period. In the 2005-06 budget, the allocation was increased. NFWP got Rs 6,000 crore in addition to the SGRY‟s Rs 4,000 crore. The NFWP remains the programme design for the NREGA. The final change came in December 2004, when the National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill was proposed in Parliament. The bill provided a guarantee of 100 days of unskilled manual work in a financial year to every poor household, in rural areas, whose adult members volunteered for work. The first phase was to cover 200 districts.

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Source: An Ecological Act : A Backgrounder to NREGA by Centre for Science and Environment (CSE)

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The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005

Unique Features There are certain characteristics about National Rural Employment Guarantee Act that make it unique in nature. They are as follows: 1. The most important change NREGA represents is that it gives rise to programmes that spring not from its wilful benevolence, but as a legally binding response by the state to a right to work that is, after NREGA, enshrined in law. This also means that a constraint of resources cannot be cited by the government as an excuse for not providing work and its attendant entitlements, all of which are now also safeguarded in the Constitution. This is a commitment by the state that is unprecedented in the history of independent India – both as a legally enforceable right and in terms of financial resources5.

2. NREGA comes up with a set of extraordinary guidelines with a very clear view on planning and implementation of the program. Social audit has also received quite a lot of importance in these guidelines. These guidelines give us an impression that the quality of work is at the centre of the stage. 3. NREG Act clearly specifies that the implementation of this Scheme has to be routed through the Government machinery only. Thus, contractors will not be used for implementation of this scheme. This is a major deviation from the past practices that are followed by the government. It is not very widely known but most government programmes in rural areas over the last 60 years have been implemented through the agency of local contractors, who have emerged as major sources of exploitation of the rural poor, especially women. They have run roughshod over basic human rights, paying labour a pittance and doing most work through labour-displacing machinery6.

4. A great amount of emphasis has been put on the transparency and accountability part during the guidelines. A lot of importance is been given to the use of Information Technology (IT) as well. This given us an indication that the government has learn from its past mistakes. Corruption has been a very major problem during all the welfare programs implemented in the past. This kind of an emphasis on transparency Source : Economic & Political Weekly Article, 2008

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and accountability in the NREGA guidelines is a way to protect the scheme from corruption. 5. Finally, this scheme seems to have followed the path that John Maynard Keynes had shown to the world with his book named “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money”7. Published in February 1936, it sought to bring about a revolution, commonly referred to as the "Keynesian Revolution", in the way economists thought - especially in relation to the proposition that a market economy tends naturally to restore itself to full employment after temporary shocks. Before Keynes came out with his opinion, the classical belief was the most prominent one throughout the world. But according to Keynes, the market forces of demand and supply do not take care and balance themselves always as the classical thinkers believed. He said that Government intervention was also necessary at times to stimulate the demand in the economy. NREGA as a scheme is a way of directly going to the rural areas and providing unemployed people with employment and therefore money. This money in turn will create demand in the economy. And as Keynes had said, the effect will be in multiples of the amount spent by the government which can be explained using the “Keynesian Multiplier Effect”. This increase in demand from the rural areas will lead to increase in supply and therefore more employment.

Thus, this scheme has the potential to: 

Stimulate demand from the rural areas that have been dormant markets throughout these many years even after independence.



To create more employment for the economy and especially for the rural areas.



To help Indian Economy as a whole in achieving a higher growth rate with the support of the demand created in the rural parts of the country.

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To help in leading development of rural areas as the supply of goods and services in these areas will increase. Thus, it can reduce the huge amount of geographical diversity that our nation faces.

Source : Introduction by Paul Krugman to The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, by John Maynard Keynes

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The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005

Structure of NREGA The Act attempts to unlock the potential of the rural poor to contribute to the reconstruction of their environment. To achieve this, it has laid emphasis on creation of productive assets in villages. Out of nine preferred areas of works under the NREGA, seven focuses on water and soil conservation. The attention of the scheme is on the following works in their order of priority8: 1. Water conservation and water harvesting 2. Drought proofing (including afforestation and tree plantation) 3. Irrigation canals (including micro and minor irrigation works) 4. Provision of irrigation facility to land owned by households belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes or to land of beneficiaries of land reforms or that of the beneficiaries under the Indira Awas Yojana of the government of India 5. Renovation of traditional water bodies (including desilting of tanks) 6. Land development 7. Flood control and protection works (including drainage in water-logged areas) 8. Rural connectivity to provide all-weather access 9. Any other work, which may be notified by the Central government in consultation with the state government Under the Act each state is required to formulate a Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme within six months of its enactment. As mentioned above the broad features like preferred works are non-negotiable thus no state can change it under its state scheme. Till the time the state has not formulated the scheme and its guidelines, the annual or perspective plan under the SGRY or the NFFWP, whichever is in force in the state, will work as action plan for NREGA implementation. The diagram below gives us a picture of how the program will be implemented, who all are involved and what are their responsibilities. As one can clearly observe from the diagram, the plan is to implement the scheme through government mechanisms rather than private bodies. Broadly, the village and intermediary Panchayat manage the implementation activities while coordination activities are done at the district Panchayat level. Planning, supervision and

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Source : The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005

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monitoring take place at all levels. However, at every level the agencies concerned are accountable to the communities.

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Village Panchayats are the basic implementing bodies for the NREGA. Local bodies (See chart: Who does what?) will plan, design and execute the works to be taken up. This is a step towards making this Act a participatory process and empowering people at the lowest level. At least 50 percent of the works under the scheme will be implemented through village panchayats. Currently, according to the Union ministry of rural development, village panchayats are implementing close to 85 percent of all works under the Act. The Act mandates the Panchayats to prepare village-level plans based on local resources and needs. These plans are then implemented using the NREGA, which effectively insulates them from political whims and pressures.

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Source : An Ecological Act : A report on “A Backgrounder to the NREGA” by “Centre for Science and Environment”

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The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005

The Gram Sabha (village council) is the legally compulsory institutional mechanism for community participation10. In addition, other methods of community participation could be instituted: local vigilance and monitoring committees, workers associations, local beneficiary committees, self-help groups, users groups and other grassroots structures. The village council takes the decision to formulate such users groups. Implementation of the NREGA starts from the Gram Sabha, which first declares the implementation of the scheme. The Gram Sabha also takes charge of popularizing the scheme for registration of people and also the procedures to demand works. The Act authorises the Gram Sabha to recommend works to be taken up under the scheme, to monitor and supervise these works, and to conduct social audits of the implementation. The village Panchayat is responsible for planning of works, registering households, issuing job cards and monitoring implementation of the scheme at village level. The Act advises appointment of employment guarantee assistant in each panchayat for this purpose. The intermediary Panchayat is responsible for planning at the block level, and for monitoring and supervision. This department/level of Panchayat is also given works for implementation of the remaining 50 percent not implemented under the village Panchayat. District Panchayat is responsible for finalising the district plans for NREGA which is a comprehensive plan of action for the scheme for the district. District Panchayat can also implement works from the 50 percent non-village Panchayat pool. The state government formulates regulations to facilitate the overall implementation. It sets up the State Employment Guarantee Council to advise the government on implementation of the scheme, and to evaluate and monitor it. The council also takes decisions on the preferred works to be undertaken in the state. The central government is rural development ministry is the nodal ministry for implementation and fund disbursal. It also monitors and evaluates the scheme. Besides it sets up the Central Employment Guarantee Council for advising it on various issues related to NREGA. NREGA is primarily implemented through two planning documents at district level called district perspective plan and annual plan. Though the district Panchayat coordinates these planning and the other two tiers of Panchayat, participation plays a crucial roles in the exercise. These two documents are designed as local five-year plans that take care of local needs. Based on these plans the Panchayats identify works. The annual plan is basically a 10

Source : The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005

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shelf of works to be taken up under the schemes and must be completed by December for the next year plan. The works are selected keeping in mind its impact on local development. The district perspective plan is intended to facilitate advance planning and to provide a development perspective for the district. This plan is prepared based on the linkages of assets to be created that will help in local development. This plan is usually for five years and based village level inputs from Panchayat.

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Problems in Implementation NREGA as we understood till now is one of the greatest acts the Government has ever come up with for the benefit of the society. The features of the plan talk about some of the extraordinary provisions that are being applied after learning from the past mistakes. Also as far as the implementation mechanism is concerned, the system designed is very different and one feels that there is a sincere effort from the Government side to restrict corruption in this scheme (which has been a major cause for the failure of the past schemes). But as has always been the case, implementation of Government problems have always produced dismal results. And NREGA cannot be an exception to this. The Ministry of Rural Development views the program as a success. On the other hand, reviews by surveys conducted by Central Statistical Organization (CSO), Centre for Science & Environment (CSE), etc show otherwise. Given below are some of the major problems that the program is facing: Preparedness of the states Many states are still struggling with the teething problems of implementation of the National act at the state level. Reports suggest that some of the states have been more active while some have had an extremely poor response. For instance, in Uttar Pradesh, State Government passed its own state scheme in compliance with the National Act on 23rd May 200611. This resulted in a delay of the preparation of state guidelines and consequent implementations of the NREGS by the Panchayats in the state.

Reports have also found that many a times, the state councils were formed late in many states. Therefore, even in case of problems, there is no avenue for redressal. Like in Jharkhand where 20 districts out of the 22 districts of the state are covered under NREGS, the state council has not been formed. Unequal distribution of funds and the resource utilization in districts A Panchayat can initiate work in its Gram Panchayats only when funds are made available to the gram Panchayats account. However, in the last nine months of the implementation, many Panchayats did not receive the required grant in time. Similarly, there was a different response of the states as well as districts to the implementation of NREGA. Some states were 11

Source : A report on “Status of NREGA Implementation” by “Samarthan – Centre for Development Support”

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very active in implementation like Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan while some states lagged behind like Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. The policy of transfer of funds from the Centre to the State in implementation was more or less same across the board. Yet some of the districts more and some other districts received less grant. In Madhya Pradesh the first kick off grant was released by the centre in the month of March and April directly to the districts. Many districts with the same number of job cardholders received remarkably different amounts in the first kick off grant. Inadequate flexibility in guidelines for addressing local issues Experts on the issue prepared the state and the national guidelines; however, there are many unforeseen conditions that cannot be anticipated. Panchayats need at least minimum flexibility and sensitivity to handling by the administration. For instance in Rajnandgaon district of Chattisgarh, construction of pond and other water conservation structure are being pushed by the state administration, however, the local soil condition is such that the water seeps in, and cannot be stored for long, if strong bottom base (pitching) of the pond is not prepared. However, Panchayats with NREGS resources could not undertake such investments. Lower payment of wages: Work done on rural employment programmes in India is measured through the schedule of rates (SoR). This schedule provides rates at which work done by labour is valued. Workers are paid according to the value placed on their work by the SoR. What the government has overlooked is that the present SoRs are meant for a system that uses contractors and machines to carry out public works. These contractors, as a rule, do not pay statutory minimum wages to labour and get most of their work done through machines like the JCB.2 Deploying the same SoRs under NREGA makes it impossible for workers to earn minimum wages. This is also because existing SoRs make inadequate provisions for variations in geology and climate, discriminate against women, tend to underpay workers by lumping various activities together and do not revise rates in line with increments in statutory minimum wages [Vijay Shankar et al 2006]. Deploying the old SoRs also makes it impossible for implementers like gram panchayats to correctly cost works undertaken by them. The result is a varying combination of a series of malpractices – more work is shown than actually undertaken on the ground, poor quality of work takes place, works are left incomplete as actual costs exceed sanctions,

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labour is underpaid, bogus workers are shown as paid while machines actually do the work, etc. Creating Wrong Notions about Program: It appears that the existing bureaucratic machinery is just not willing to play ball with the strict provisions of NREGA and are at times actively sabotaging its implementation. Where PRI leaders are keen to implement NREGA work, secretaries and executive officers of gram panchayats are seen to be working overtime to convince these leaders of the “perils” of getting entangled with NREGA. In Bolangir, Orissa, executive officers of panchayats routinely dissuade sarpanchs from putting up a demand for work under NREGA by raising the bogey of getting caught under the strict provisions of the law. NREGA is apparently seen as a programme where making money is not only “unnecessarily complicated” but might also be “fraught with danger”. While critics of the Act have expressed fears that this scheme too will go the normal route of leakages, ironically many field-level functionaries perceive NREGA as a programme where corruption is very difficult, due to the numerous procedures that have been introduced. Cost of the Program: Finally, we now talk about one of the most important problems that is faced by NREGA – problem of inadequate funds to successfully run the program. From April 2008 onwards, the NREGA will be extended to the whole country. In our own view, this is a decision that should have been taken only after the lessons of the first two years had been absorbed and necessary correctives put into place. Be that as it may, the Economic and Political Weekly has estimated the cost12 of the support structure assuming that the employment guarantee will extend to the whole country from April 2008. Table 2 (p 46) presents the total cost of works under the employment guarantee. According to the Seventh Report of the Rural Labour Enquiry [Labour Bureau 2004], there were 13.71 crore rural households (RH) in the country in 1999-2000, of which 5.51 crore (40 per cent) were rural labour households (RLH). Projecting the number of RLH to grow at an annual compound rate of 1.93 per cent (the national rate of growth of population between 1991 and 2001), we get a figure of 6.42 crore RLH in the country in April 2008. If we assume that 80 per cent of them offer themselves for employment, the number of RLH for whom the 100-day job guarantee would have to be extended comes to 5.14 crore,

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Source : Economic and Political Weekly Report, 2008

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(say, for the sake of convenience 5 crore households). Assuming a daily minimum wage rate of Rs 70 (which is the weighted average of minimum wages across states reported by the MoRD 2008), the total wage cost of the programme is Rs 35,000 crore. The average wage: non-wage cost ratio of NREGA over the last two years has been around 70:30 [MoRD 2008]. Thus, the total cost of NREGA works comes to Rs 50,000 crore, if the programme is to be extended to the whole country by April 2008.

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Recommendations Before we give any recommendations from our side, here are the recommendations that Second Administrative Reforms Commission13 gave for NREGA to the Ministry of Rural Development:

Here are some of the additional recommendations from our side: Concentration on productive asset creation: NREGA as the name suggests means to create employment for the rural people of India, but the prime objective of it is to make sure that it creates assets with the people who are employed through this scheme. This will create a sense of feeling in the mind of the other villagers that this scheme is giving results and thus motivate them to join it and thus help the scheme to get nearer to its main purpose. The real effectiveness of the scheme can be measured by using three parameters:

1. Increase in average annual income of households 2. Increase in the productivity of small and marginal land holdings 3. Quality and contribution of assets like water tanks to overall water availability and groundwater recharge etc.

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Source : An Ecological Act : A report on “A Backgrounder to the NREGA” by “Centre for Science and Environment”

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Wage Payment: NREGA promises employment but does not say anything about the wage rate. In actual the wage rate for a NREGA worker is very less i.e. about 40% of what the same person could have earned by putting the same efforts in building the roads.14 Some states have rationalised the wage structure but some still follow the old structure and pay very less. Though the NREGA scheme provides a minimum wage clause this point is not well highlighted and often ignored, this wage structure is not based on the effort put but on time spent on job. The recommendations are that these points should be highlighted more so that they can be implemented along with the scheme and thus increase participation among the people. Focus on completion and maintenance of work It has been seen that 80% of the work started by NREGA was left incomplete after 2 years of beginning15 as there is no provision in the act for completion of the work. The states have also found out an easy way to keep the work going forever they take up big projects and then leave them incomplete after 2 years and then these projects get washed away in monsoons which leads to building them again and not seeing a finished project in a long time. The maintenance of these projects is also very costly and the government does not provide this on regular basis which leads to fund shortage which ultimately leads to incompletion of the project and wastages of funds already put invested. Village level planning: As NREGA is a scheme which is for the rural India the control of its design has to be in the hands of the users i.e. the village panchayats. The scheme was build in this fashion only where the end user had the right to design the program but after so many years of its implementations it has been seen that NFFWP (National Food for Work Programme) does all the planning and bypasses the gram panchayats and local bodies to implement the plan. This is the mistake which the early schemes also made and failed miserably.

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Source : Center for science and environment.

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Water conservation & Plantation: There are no restrictions on the work which is taken up by the villagers to work on as per NREGA i.e., they are free to build any infrastructure they feel is important for them and NFFWP is also under no pressure to build a particular asset. All things considered when NREGA was started it had a basic project in mind that this scheme will be used to build assets for water conservation and likes but only 5 states have implemented this scheme in this direction out of which 67% of the work is carried out in Andhra Pradesh alone. This shows how the main aim of NREGA is not fulfilled though this aim is not explicitly mentioned anywhere. This aim was set taking into consideration many criteria‟s such as the areas where NREGA was implemented were basically short of water and this could help them save water for irrigation and other important work. In the same manner plantation is also a permissible work under NREGA which is not very widely used and can be very helpful to achieve the above mentioned goal of saving water. This work helps save the trees and also afforestation and helps keep the ground water level appropriate. Train and hire Personnel: One of the problems with this programme is that the people monitoring are not in sufficient or are not well qualified, so the monitoring and execution is not done appropriately. The suggestion is to a. Appoint a full time district programme coordinator dedicated to NREGA. b. Appoint a full time programme officer at the block level, dedicated only for NREGA. c. Appoint 3 civil engineers at each block level. d. Appointments of employee guarantee assistants in each village.16

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Source : Economic & Political Weekly Article,2008

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Conclusion We would like to end with a brief reflection on the politics of NREGA. For it cannot be overlooked that the very enactment of NREGA is the product of a sustained struggle led by civil society and supported by left-leaning politicians across the political spectrum. The significance of this movement cannot be overstated as it represents one of the very few successful campaigns in favour of the rural poor in India, whose voice is almost unheard on the national scene. This is, of course, truly ironic for it is these “dumb millions” who fashion the destinies of those seeking to rule this country. But their cries for reform of the public sector in rural areas, which is often their sole lifeline, have gone completely unattended. The NREGA ranks among the most powerful initiatives ever undertaken for transformation of rural livelihoods in India. The unprecedented commitment of financial resources is matched only by its imaginative architecture that promises a radically fresh programme of rural development. However, for NREGA to realise its potential, it must focus on raising the productivity of agriculture in India‟s most backward regions. This can then lead further to the creation of allied livelihoods on the foundation of water security. This is also the only way we can envision a decline in the size of the work guarantee over time, as public investment under NREGA leads to higher rural incomes, that in turn spurs private investment and greater in- comes and employment. Finally, we can say that “The NREGA Programme”, reformed on certain aspects as mentioned, holds out the prospect of not only transforming livelihoods of the poorest people of our country but also heralding a revolution in rural governance in India.

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References Following reports have been our point of references for preparation of this project: 1. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 2. Two Years of NREGA : The Road Ahead, Economic & Political Weekly, 2008 3. An Ecological Act : The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Centre for Science and Environment 4. Status of NREGA Implementation 2006-07, Central Statistical Organization 5. Performance Audit Report No. 11 of 2008, Comptroller and Auditor General of India 6. The Indian National Rural Employment Guarantee Act : Will it remove poverty in India, Overseas Development Institute 7. Introduction by Paul Krugman to The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, by John Maynard Keynes Apart from these we have collected information from various articles of the following newspapers: 1. The Economic Times 2. The Financial Express 3. The Hindu Times 4. The Times of India 5. The Indian Express 6. The Telegraph of India Some of the online sources of information that we accesses were: 1. www.nrega.nic.in 2. www.rural.nic.in

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