At times the elected
governments seem to either deliberately ignore the scientific evidences or do
not take the necessary inputs into consideration when they set the priorities
of the nation in the budget. The
pronouncement by the Finance Minister Mr. Jaitley in his maiden budget speech to
link MGNREGA with more productive assets creation and agriculture is something
bereft of an understanding of the village dynamics and ground realities. At least the government could have waited for
the results of the ongoing nation wide Evaluation Study of the MGNREGA that the
Planning Commission is conducting through ten reputed research institutions
across the country.
I was part of the Evaluation
Study Team in the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala which
was assigned the task of conducting the study in the four major southern States
of India. A few Institutes including CDS
have already submitted the draft report to the Planning Commission and the
others will be doing it soon. The Finance Minister’s proposal to revamp MGNREGA
is premature and the following facts that emanated from our field study may
perhaps enlighten him: (i) The demand to
link MGNREGA with agriculture is basically the lobby of big and medium farmers;
(ii) Most of the landlords we interviewed felt that it was hard for them to
tolerate the once deprived have-nots becoming financially empowered and some of
them openly said, “how could we see these lower caste fellows holding five
hundred rupee notes in front of us”.
This was one of the reasons for them to openly oppose MGNREGA
implementation in some villages; (iii) Many of the big farmers were candid in
accepting the fact that their agricultural activities were affected by factors like
monsoon failure, rapid urbanisation, and industrialisation and NOT by MGNREGA
implementation. As a result of these
factors, the ‘skilled’ labourers migrated to towns and cities looking for
better employment opportunities and only a few stayed back in their respective
villages and opted to work in MGNREGA; (iv) The non-availability of ‘skilled’
labourers for agricultural activities is a major concern in rural areas and
almost all the agricultural land owners wanted MGNREGA workers to work in their
field and suggested that the Government must amend the law to enable the
workers to work in their private land;
(v) On the other hand, most of the unskilled workers employed in MGNREGA,
unanimously said that they would prefer to work in government schemes rather
than working in private agricultural lands under exploitative conditions. The facts (iii) and (v) clearly point to the
sad ground reality that the feudal thinking and casteism are still strong in
the villages. In such a scenario, how is
it that the Finance Minister proposes to supply MGNREGA workers for private
work without any mechanism that would keep the exploitative practices of the
greedy land owners at bay? This is a
very serious and sensitive question which needs to be handled sensibly. Any move by the Government should be cautious
and should never allow anything that would reinforce existing caste/class
hierarchy and conflict in the life of village community.
The other important point to
be noted from the above observations is that the activities of productive asset
creations and agriculture require reasonable levels of skill which the poor
workers currently employed in MGNREGA obviously do not posses. This fact needs to be seen in light of the
objective of the Act itself. The MGNREGA
is pretty clear on this, that is, the objective of the Act is to ensure 100
days of wage employment to those poor rural household members who are willing to
do ‘unskilled work’ given to them in a financial year. Remember MGNREGA provides ‘unskilled’ work
for those unskilled persons. There is
absolutely nothing illogical or wrong in the proposal to link MGNREGA with the
skill driven productive asset creations and agricultural activities especially
at a time when India’s agriculture sector’s performance is abysmally low. However, such a move would call for a
thorough understanding of the skill levels of rural workforce and introduce a
programme to build the capacity or skill of the otherwise unskilled poor rural household
members. Further, if the Government is
serious in reviving agriculture in the country and village economy, the Finance
Minister must have come out with a clear cut strategy and bigger incentives for
the skilled agricultural labourers to retain them back in their traditional
profession. Instead, Mr. Jaitley went on
to announce 20 new industrial clusters and 100 mega city projects. Well, nothing wrong again! However, it would
have been a balancing act, had he come out with a ‘100 mega village revival’
project. That would have really been a radical employment generation move.
When all is said and done, the
Government, before revamping MGNREGA or attempting to do anything with the Act,
must wait for the final report of the National Evaluation Study of the MGNREGA,
seriously consider the results of the report, and call for a nation wide debate
on an Act that was not a gift of the previous UPA regime but a hard won
livelihood security by the pro poor citizens of this country. I must add from the findings of our
evaluation study in the four southern Indian States that the implementation of
MGNREGA has been largely successful and enhanced the livelihood security of the
unskilled workers in rural areas. To a great
extent, the implementation has financially empowered the poor especially
women. When the ground reality is
positive, why would the government revamp an Act that reflects the will of the
people?
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