A broken guarantee

MGNREGA glitches need to be fixed

The finding by a survey conducted by the Institute of Economic Growth (IEG) that migration from villages for jobs has not diminished despite the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) points to the scheme’s failure to meet one of its two key objectives. It is also a tacit indication that the second major objective of livelihood security is only being partially served. Mercifully, the huge expenditure being incurred on this scheme is not going totally unrewarded. It has begun to show some positive outcomes thanks to shifting the focus towards taking up soil and water conservation works under this scheme in the past few years. The survey has estimated an 11.5 per cent increase in the productivity of cereals and a 32 per cent rise in the case of vegetables in areas where water-conservation assets have been created. More importantly, rural income has risen by 11 per cent in these areas. Despite this, migration from rural areas has continued unabated in about 80 per cent of the surveyed districts. In others, it has dipped only marginally.

Clearly, the gains for beneficiaries from the MGNREGA have been insufficient to stop them from moving out in search of better earning opportunities. Low wages and an inadequate number of days of assured employment could be among the major reasons for this. The survey found that average wages earned by MGNREGA workers in many regions were lower than market rates. In some cases, these were below even the minimum wage rates. Besides, many other irregularities in the implementation of the programme have also tended to persist despite a noticeable overall improvement in the functioning of the MGNREGA. The most glaring among these is the delay in wage payment beyond the stipulated 15 days. This is regardless of the steady annual increase in the budgetary allocations to the MGNREGA, which touched a record Rs 48,000 crore in 2017-18. Much of the delay is said to be in payments for the material component of the works undertaken for job creation. This has to be shared by the Centre and states on a 75:25 basis. The states, most often, fail to release the funds on time.

For the most part of its 12-year-long history, the MGNREGA has been plagued with rampant malpractices, leakage of funds and diversion of resources to other sectors by state governments. Instances were legion of fake job cards and fake entries in job sheets. In many cases, people had multiple cards to draw extra benefits. A recent drive by the rural development ministry to clean up this programme has led to the cancellation of over 9.3 million bogus job cards, thus, reducing the number of phoney beneficiaries by nearly 31 million. The ministry is now introducing electronic muster rolls of beneficiaries and pushing for a payment system based on Aadhaar. Such measures need to be continued to plug the leakages and ensure better targeting of the scheme. The Panchayati Raj institutions that choose beneficiaries and suggest the works to be undertaken need to ensure greater transparency in this task. Caution is also called for to ensure that the MGNREGA remains a safety net for workers to tide over hard times and does not compete with regular agricultural work for employment. Otherwise, this programme will exacerbate the labour crunch, which has already become the farm sector’s bane, especially in agriculturally progressive areas.