NAC to discuss NREGS, denotified tribes this week

The National Advisory Council (NAC) is expected to engage itself this week on possible changes in guidelines for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to enable ‘gram sabhas’ to plan durable assets under the 100-day employment guarantee law.

The planning of NREGs work is supposed to be done at the gram sabha level. However, in most cases, the gram sabha of a panchayat includes scores of hamlets and the voice of each villages, not to speak of individuals, remains unheard. NAC will also discuss the possibility of taking NREGA planning to the village level as a means to make the villages leverage the workdays under the scheme.

In addition, the council is likely to discuss ways to promote development of some of the most backward communities clubbed under the name of denotified tribes. A committee set up by NAC last year to recommend ways for improving the condition of denotified tribes will present its report this week. The council would also explore the possibility of rectifying the gap between the village and planning of projects related to natural resources. An NAC member said the idea was to see how best NREGS could be used around land and water resources. For this, it was essential to take planning to the village level.

According to an Indian Institute of Science study of natural resources conservation in NREGA in Chitradurga, Karnataka, excellent results were found in water conservation, increased ground water recharge, water percolation, enhanced water storage in tanks, increased soil fertility, reclamation of degraded lands and carbon sequestration in the villages it studied.

The study says factors such as low crop and livestock productivity, water shortage for drinking and irrigation and shortage of fuel wood and grass lead to rural poverty. This can be linked to degradation of natural resources such as soil, water resources, grazing land and forests.

These tribes which don t come under scheduled castes or scheduled tribes are not identified and enumerated in the Census too and have been left out of development interventions.

Studies have found these tribes to be living in poverty with little means of earning a livelihood . An independent study done in Western Maharashtra in 1990-92 found that 53.75 per cent of the DNT families wre dependent on wage labor while 22.6 per cent on service, 9.59 per cent on petty trade and 9.22 per cent on begging , pickpocketing and distillig alcohol and 4.81 per cent on agriculture.

Some of these tribes prospered in the pre independence era when their trades were in the reckoning. However most of them were notified as criminals by the British and this was undone only after independence giving them the name of denotified tribes.

A survey done in Maharashtra had found approximatel y DNT to be seven per cent of the population.