The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) completes one year of its operation on  1^st February 2007. Launching the programme on this day last year at Bandlapalli village in Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh, the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh described the NREG Act as a most significant legislation of our times, ensuring a legal right to work. It is no doubt an important milestone in the history of India’s working people. The NREG Act constitutes the first step towards realizing the right to work as enshrined in the Directive Principles of State Policy in the Constitution. Article 39 states that “the State shall, in particular, direct its policy towards securing…(a) that the citizen, men and women equally, have the right to an adequate means of livelihood.” 

Empower Ordinary People

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act empowers ordinary people to demand their constitutional right to work by placing a corresponding duty on the State to implement that right.  By virtue of its legislative status, NREGA is different from earlier schemes aimed at employment generation as this scheme is not prone to arbitrary modification and revision.

The main objective of the NREG Act is to free rural India from poverty. Referring to a strong NREGA movement, The Hindu magazine said that the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act “offers an opportunity to remove substantially the specter of starvation deaths from rural India”.  It also aims at reducing rural-urban migration.  The logic is simple; why should families in rural areas migrate to cities when there is work available almost at their doorsteps.  Its other objectives are to empower women, create productive assets in rural areas, empower the panchayats and create a more equitable social order by changing the power equations in the rural society.   

Job Card

A notable feature of the NREGA is that households domiciled in a village are entitled to work on demand within five kilometer radius after securing a job card through an ordinary application.     The Job card containing photograph can have a multiple future use, for example, provision of social security benefits like insurance and healthcare.  Job cards have been issued to over 3.36 crore rural households.  The number of job card holders is 1.6 times the number of estimated families below the poverty line. 27 percent of job card holders have sought employment.  In Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tripura, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab, the number of households seeking employment is higher than the number of families estimated to be below the poverty line.  It proves that the people in rural areas have become conscious of this right and that is NREGA’s first victory

In the first eleven months since its inception, one crore thirty-three lakh people belonging to over 76 thousand households have been provided employment in 200 most backward districts in 27 states. 43 percent of them are women.  Among the beneficiaries, 45 percent belong to Scheduled Castes and 32 percent to Scheduled tribes. 2500 lakh person days of employment has been provided under the programme through execution of about 2 lakh 30 thousand works of which almost half have been completed.  These works are predominantly for water and soil conservation, afforestation and land development, thus creating durable rural assets.  50 percent of the works are implemented by gram panchayats. Contractors and machinery are out of bounds from NREGA works, which have to be labour intensive with 60 percent funds being spent on wages alone.

Care has been taken to dispense with fears expressed from time to time about slippages of NREGA funds or robbing the poor workers of their hard earned wages.  The Act allows for the public inspection of documents on payment of a fee and regular social audits of the scheme’s implementation by the gram Sabha. There is also provision for inspection of all works by block level officials, 10 percent of works by district level officers and 2 percent of works by State level officers.  Moreover, the Rural Development Ministry has been regularly urging state authorities to set up local vigilance and monitoring committees. NIC has developed web-enabled MIS software for application from the village to the Ministry level, which has been provided to all States before launching NREGA.  

Monitoring  by Centre

Monitoring initiatives by the Centre include 137 National Level Monitoring visits, 29 visits by Area officers, review meetings and state specific reviews and field inspections, as well as independent professional studies.  All findings are being shared with states. Fund transfer is being done directly to districts, which are expected to place required amounts with gram panchayats & other implementing agencies.  Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Tamilnadu & Karnataka have arranged to transfer funds directly to beneficiary accounts in banks and/or post offices. All these efforts are laudable for ensuring transparency but it is the vigilance by the NGOs and Voluntary organisations in particular and by the people in general that will guarantee a fair play.

NREGA is just one year old and it would be early to judge its real impact on rural economy as also it is applicable at present in 200 districts only.  However, so far the indications are by and large positive.  The Rural Development Minister Dr. Raghuvansh Prasad Singh is optimistic when he recently said,” Next year (2007-08), we are going to implement NREGA in 200 more districts and we will cover the whole country by the end of the term of the UPA Government”.

            With its aim to free people from the clutches of poverty, the NREGA can transform the lives of rural poor.  What it requires is a strong commitment from various stake holders, administrative transparency and effective public monitoring. 

SV/AB/RTS/VN

SS-45/SF-45/31.01.2007