Lethargy creeps into rural jobs, fund for NREGS shrinks

SOCIAL SECTOR: Allocation for livelihood creation, rural road building, sanitation, drinking water sees remarkable increase

Poor spending of the funds allocated last year had the finance minister shrinking the Budget for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) this time around. NREGS has been allocated Rs 33,000 crore in the Union Budget 2012-13, as against Rs 40,000 crore last year. Last year too, under the Revised Estimates, the funds for NREGS had been reduced to Rs 31,000 crore.

However, allocations for significant interventions in livelihood creation and rural road building, sanitation and drinking water have seen a remarkable increase in the Budget. The rural development ministry’s total allocation has gone up from Rs 67,138 crore last year to Rs 73,175 crore. It was Rs 72,061 crore in 2010-11.

The Budget delivered booster shots to the following rural programmes:
Aajeevika and the Women’s Fund: The programme, which was earlier called Swarnajayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojna and later the National Rural Livelihood Mission, has been allotted Rs 3,563 crore against Rs 2,412 crore last year.

Based on a successful model developed initially in states like Andhra Pradesh and Kerala and meant to make rural women self-reliant, the programme is being scaled up across the country. The strategy is to link women’s groups with business models and back them with bank credit till they are on their own. The Women’s Self-Help Group Development Fund announced in the last Budget and set up under Nabard has been provided another Rs 200 crore to add to its corpus of Rs 300 crore. This fund is meant for women SHGs under Aajeevika. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee pointed out that the SHGs would be able to take loans up to Rs 3 lakh at 7 per cent interest, and if they repaid on time, they could get loans at a reduced rate of 4 per cent. A Livelihood Foundation has also been announced through the scheme to scale up civil society initiatives in tribal regions. The foundation is being set up as a parallel entity to the NGO funding body of CAPART under the ministry.

Drinking water and sanitation: Allocations have gone up from Rs 10,000 crore to Rs 14,000 crore. The total sanitation campaign has seen allocations go up from Rs 2,350 crore to Rs 3,500 crore.

Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojana: This has seen an increase in allocation from Rs 18,198 crore to Rs 21,699 crore. Launched in 2000, it seeks to provide road connectivity to all habitations with a population of over 500. A total of 158,849 habitations are targeted for coverage. Half of these are to be covered under Bharat Nirman, a package to provide basic amenities to villages.

Social security: Pensions for widows and payments under the family benefit schemes have also gone up. The former is up from Rs 200 to Rs 300, while the latter, on the death of the head of the family, is up from Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000. The government has also set aside Rs 350 crore to cover all NREGA workers under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana. The Budget is, however, silent on the unorganised sector social security fund.

Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh said the reduction in NREGS funds did not matter because it was a demand-based programme. He pointed out that the overall allocation to the ministry as a whole had gone up.