Irregularities in social security schemes in Bundelkhand: Survey

A survey has detected ‘rampant’ corruption in the implementation of social security schemes, especially Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), in the impoverished Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh.

According to the ‘performance audit’ of 10 food security and poverty alleviation schemes in Uttar Pradesh, majority of Dalits in Bundelkhand had no access to food security schemes.

The survey was conducted by New Delhi-based Centre for Environment and Food Security (CEFS) in five districts of Bundelkhand region in Uttar Pradesh covering 50 villages.

According to its findings, about 64 per cent of Dalit households in Bundelkhand do not have Below Poverty Line (BPL) or Antoyoday cards and hence no access to public distribution system (PDS) grain.

Fifty per cent poor households in Chitrakoot district, 73 per cent in Banda, 80 per cent in Mahoba, 61 per cent in Hamirpur and 51 per cent in Lalitpur had no access to PDS grain. “Only 37 per cent of ration card holders had actually received their full quota of grain in the previous year,” CEFS director Parshuram Rai told Business Standard.

The performance audit was conducted during July-October 2010. He said over 52 per cent of poor did not get even a single day of MNREGS employment and about 20 days of average MNREGS employment was provided to the surveyed household in previous year.

“We found serious irregularities and rampant corruption in the implementation of MNREGS. In none of the surveyed villages had any gram sabha meeting or social audit of the scheme had taken place,” Rai added.

The survey concluded there was no let up in distress migration of dalits and other poor communities from rural areas in the state. “Due to brazen denial of MNREGS employment, large number of poor villagers had migrated to cities and towns in search of casual wage employment,” Rai claimed.

He maintained distress migration from most sample villages was high and almost 50-60 per cent of working population.

Other schemes covered under the survey included mid-day meal, integrated child development scheme, national old age pension scheme, national family benefit scheme, national maternity benefit scheme and swarnajayanti gram swarozgar yojana.