Food for work plan will fail: NGOs

A critique of the national food for work programme by about 100 activists from different organisations working among the poor in Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra reveals glaring lacunae in the "guidelines" of the programme launched in November 2004.

Activists say the programme lacks the essential features of a credible employment guarantee programme. They say unless the guidelines""issued by the ministry of rural development""are corrected, the programme, that had a budget outlay of Rs 11,000 crore in 2005-06, is doomed to failure.

The findings of the activists have been compiled by roziroti.com, a website dedicated to monitoring the employment guarantee programme.

Roziroti says, according to the guidelines, the programme is a self-targeting employment programme "open to all rural poor who are in need of wage employment and desire to do manual and unskilled work."

Wages were envisaged to be paid partly in cash and partly in grain. It was meant to be a 100 per cent centrally-sponsored scheme with even the foodgrain being provided to the states free, leaving the latter to bear only transportation cost, handling charges, and taxes on foodgrain.

The principal focus of the works that could be executed under the programme were: water conservation and drought proofing including afforestation; land development; flood control/ protection measures (including drainage in waterlogged areas) and rural connectivity with fair weather roads.

The basis of works taken up under the programme was to be a five-year perspective plan for the district from which a shelf of works, block-wise and gram panchayat-wise, was to have been prepared for execution.

The problem, activists say, is that the guidelines contain no instrument for assessing the demand for work. The perspective plan, which is the substantive foundation of the programme, is based merely on preparing a list of works rather than being linked to the demand for employment.

This is in contrast to famine relief works where the very first step is to assess the demand for employment at the district, sub-division, block and village panchayat levels, they say.

A practical implication of this is that the distribution of works may end up not matching the demand for employment, they say.

For example, areas with high demand may get works with low absorptive capacity and vice versa, which will defeat the objective of the programme, activists say.

The absence of a mechanism to gauge the demand for work also means that the injection of labour entitlements in the programme is lost. The guidelines contain no provisions for workers to register themselves for work, or be issued job cards, which would record the quantum of work and wages they have received, the activists find.

The guidelines also say nothing about the procedural involvement of the gram sabhas and other panchayati raj institutions. The district collector will set up a committee and decide the perspective plan. This will then be sent to the state government to be forwarded to the ministry of rural development.

The people whom it is meant to employ and benefit will, therefore, be left out of decision-making, the activists believe. As the preparation of a perspective plan can be subcontracted to an agency outside government (like a non-government organisation) by the collector, local inputs will be missing, leading to a drastic curtailment of flexibility necessary in such projects.

Activists believe as there is tremendous pressure on district collectors - of the 150 districts selected for the programme to begin with - plans for five years are being drawn up in such a hurry that it will be impossible to correct them later.

Other serious limitations of the guidelines include:

1. The guidelines do not specify where and how people seeking employment should register themselves. Given the possible multiplicity of executing agencies, it is not clear how people would even be informed about employment opportunities.
   
   
2. The guidelines do not clarify how the payment of minimum wages will be ensured.
   
   
3. There are no provisions in place to ensure that the perspective plan and the works contemplated cover all areas of the district on the basis of need and demand for work.
   
4. The guidelines do not provide for any mechanism for PRIs to address any grievances even though it gives "the panchayat concerned the right to inspect and review any work under the scheme in its jurisdiction."
   
   
5. There is a provision for social audit of works carried out under the programme, essentially through a vigilance committee to be constituted by the beneficiaries. However, the guidelines are silent regarding how social audit is to be done and grievance redress mechanisms in case the vigilance committee has a complaint or files an adverse report.
   
   
6. Generally, the provisions for transparency and accountability are very weak. An opportunity has been missed to build on the extensive work that has been done recently on the drafting of the Employment Guarantee Act and the Right to Information Act.
   
7. The guidelines have no provisions for participatory evaluation of the programme.