NREGA ombudsmen fail to take off

When the National Rural Employment Guarantees Scheme (NREGS) was announced, the idea of having ombudsmen to oversee the rollout of the scheme to prevent corruption was also mooted.

Now, when India is in the grip of a furious debate on the appointment of a Lok Pal and his jurisdiction, the concept of a Lok Pal for NREGS appears to have been forgotten.

The ombudsmen were to be selected by a committee of people identified by the ministry of rural development. They were to act as Lok Pal for NREGS.

Of the 625 districts in the country, not even 25 have ombudsmen, and, according to those who took part in the selection procedure, the whole process was a total failure, with the ombudsmen becoming part of an extortion exercise in many cases.

The fate of the ombudsmen mirrors the possible fate of the Lok Pal, too, says Ashwini Kumar, member of the National Employment Guarantee Council, who also headed a committee on transparency within the council.

“The NREGA ombudsmen never took off. In some districts, cronies were appointed, while many states did not even bother to appoint anyone. None of the states called us,” he says.

Kumar was also part of a central selection committee meant to help with the identification of ombudsmen in various districts.

Tamil Nadu, for instance, which gives its payments in cash and needs an ombudsman badly, did not call us even for a meeting, he says.

An outgoing member of the council, Kumar is a researcher with the Tata Institute for Social Sciences. One of his reports on corruption in NREGA in Orissa led to the filing of a case in the Supreme Court.

Kumar feels there is a basic error in the concept of ombudsmen.

He says a national ombudsman, coupled with participation of the public through public hearing and social audits, would have made a difference.

Kumar had proposed such national ombudsmen at the council, but this was never taken up.

Kumar feels the Lok Pal debate also needs to take lessons from the absolute failure of the ombudsmen to take off.

It needs more plurality and a less top-down approach.

“Team Anna should create incentives for people participation, that is, make it more pluralistic” he says.

Says Nikhil De of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan, “The ombudsmen failed primarily because they were never given any importance by the government.

It had no office, no staff, and got Rs 500 a sitting. A gram sevak gets Rs 1,000. If you want senior people to do this, you need to give more respect to the job.”

However, he thinks ombudsmen and the Lok Pal are not comparable.