States' grants tied to wage payment

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is set to get a makeover from April.

New guidelines for NREGA — submitted to the ministry of rural development and described by the ministry of rural development as NREGA Version 2.0 — suggest making free labour available for paddy farmers. It also wants to ensure people get work within 15 days of placing a demand or are paid the unemployment allowance, which is half the wages.

The new version would make payment of wages component by the Centre conditional to the payment of unemployment allowances by the states, as allocations would be released only when work demand is reported by the state.

Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday, while releasing the guidelines, ruled out the possibility of fund requirements shooting up when work demand is accurately captured. “It is not true that the work demand will increase with time,” he said.

Planning Commission member Mihir Shah, who headed the panel that drew up the guidelines, said demand for funds would go up only in states where demand exists. States would have to pay allowances as payslips would be generated automatically, according to the guidelines.

The guidelines also allow villagers to record their demand for work and get receipts from certain sources. Refusing to accept job applications and delay in payments have been made punishable under Section 25 of MGNREGA.

A ministry official said: “We will get details of work demand, then send them to states and demand payment of allowances. And allocations will be linked to states providing details of work demand and the allowances paid.”

The proposals also expand the number and kind of work under the scheme. It allows NREGA labour for construction of poultry shelter, goat shelter, pucca floor, urine tanks and fodder trough for cattle, azolla cultivation and fisheries related work. Material-heavy tasks added to it include construction of toilets in households, schools and anganwadis, as well as work related to waste management.

The new guidelines primarily aim at resolving the conflict that had emerged between NREGA and the farm sector by offering workers under the scheme to paddy cultivators under the System of Rice Intensification or SRI (a low-water cultivation technique being popularised in many states).

Each small and medium SRI farmer will be eligible for eight person-days of work per acre for one-time transplantation, two person-days of work per acre for weeding at 10 to 15 days after transplantation and two person-days of work per acre for weeding at 20 to 30 days after transplantation, the new guidelines say.

The guidelines provide for dedicated officials at the panchayat and district levels.

In the weakest areas, the guidelines provide for a clustering of villages and providing a team of professionals to support a handful of clusters each in planning their work and so on. According to Shah, about 2,000 blocks that have a 30 per cent population of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes would qualify.