Employment guarantee scheme keeps out poorest
NREGP SCAN
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP) was meant for the poorest of the poor, those who will sweat it out in the heat for survival. Reports from villages where the scheme has been implemented suggest that might not always be true.
A study carried out by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) this year says food-secure households got more work days compared to those who are food-insecure.
The survey covered 3,200 poorest households in 80 villages in seven states and came out with the conclusion that once people got job cards, a selection bias operates within the scheme which tends to keep out the most needy. Those who benefited the most were the better-offs among the households — those with a cow or some other asset.
The NCAER study also found out that the beneficiaries who got repeated offers of work were those with some contacts in community institutions like gram sabhas, mahila mandals, self-help groups or schools. This was especially true of women.
In the sample it covered, the study found that people from Schedule Tribes got 8.7 days an average, food-secure got 11.9 days, the less food-secure got 7 days and the women in community institutions got 14 days. Migrants got the least — just 1.6 days.
Translating these into categories based on food inadequacy, the NCAER says that for every 40 high food-adequacy people who got 16 days of work, just 26 food-inadequate people got work and that too only half of what the former got.
“That the women in community institutions fared well was a positive sign and indicates that a strategy to improve the NREGP should include a way to help gram sabhas identify the food-insecure in the community and target them for more wage days,” said economist Abusaleh Sharif, an advisor for the study.
The report looks at factors which determine the number of employment days conditional upon enrolment into the NREGP. Sharif said that exclusion of Schedule Caste people was obvious, though the ultimate parameter was how food-secure the beneficiaries were. They benefited the least, he says.
“Households categorised as relatively well-off have significantly higher participation during the last one year. So far as the socio-economic conditions are concerned, no benefit accrues to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and economic conditions show positive and significant (10 per cent) impact suggesting self selection of NREGP is fairly broad-based and therefore seems less beneficial to the poorest of the poor,” Sharif added.
“While those reporting food inadequacy have positive (but not significant) tendency to enrol in NREGP, those who have very high food inaccessibility also have negative coefficients suggesting no benefits accruing to the poorest,” Sharif said, adding: “What made it worse for the poor was the fact that its penetration was a mere 2 per cent among the sample it covered, and of those who got work, the average number of work days was 30.”
| FOOD FOR THOUGHT | ||
| Food security status | % who | No. of days |
| High food adequacy | 40 | 16 |
| Somewhat good food adequacy | 45 | 14 |
| Average food adequacy | 53 | 22 |
| Somewhat inadequate food | 49 | 18 |
| Highly inadequate food | 26 | 7 |
| Source: Abusaleh Shariff, an advisor for the nine-state study on NREGP by NCAER | ||
So if in a sample of 200 eligible households, 20,000 days of work should be created, the work created was just 6 per cent in a district in Madhya Pradesh, 6.7 per cent in Keonjhar (Orissa), 12.6 per cent in Ganjam (Orissa), 6.9 per cent in Sitapur (Uttar Pradesh), 5.3 per cent in Azamgarh (Uttar Pradesh), about 3 per cent in Purnia (Bihar) and Palamu (Jharkhand).