Work & equal pay come home to village women

The Telegraph,14th March, 2009

In 2008, Meenabai did what she had not done for the previous three years. She stayed back at her home in Orissa’s Kalahandi instead of going job-hunting in a neighbouring state.
The widow in her 50s says she was “lucky’’ to get nearly 100 days’ work in her village. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme was extended to her district last year, assuring 100 days of unskilled manual work a year to one adult member from every rural household.
Meenabai helped build canals and desilt the local tank, and dug pits for bio-diesel plantations. At first she was paid Rs 70 per day’s work but the Orissa government later raised the wage to Rs 100.
The mother of eight, who had in the past travelled as far as Kerala in search of work after the harvesting season, says she had never earned more than Rs 40 a day before as a migrant labourer. But what tickles her even more is that she is now paid on a par with her male co-workers.
“I will not have to leave my home this year either,” she said.
Gender equality in wages, creation of local jobs, reduction in distress migration and giving villagers the empowering feeling of having a “government job’’ — the high points of the UPA government’s flagship programme have been heavy on substance.
The average wage under the scheme works out to Rs 85 a day, the highest being Rs 140 in Haryana. Its ripple effect has raised wages in the rural areas.
Millions of Meenabais across the country have benefited. According to official statistics, women’s participation in the scheme, said to be the brainchild of Sonia Gandhi, has been over 42 per cent nation-wide against the targeted 33 per cent.
In Orissa, NGOs say, the figure is at least 50 per cent and in states such as Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, it’s as high as 80 per cent. The creation of local jobs has cut down migration for labour by 60 per cent in certain areas.
According to the rural development ministry’s statistics, the scheme has benefited 3.58 crore households so far — one in every six households in the country.
The act came into effect on February 2, 2006. To begin with, it was implemented in 200 of India’s poorest districts, spread over 27 states.
Last year, the government extended the scheme to all the 604 rural districts in the country, which elect over 400 of the Lok Sabha’s 543 members. The budget outlay for the scheme for 2008-09 was Rs 16,000 crore.
Government figures say that the Scheduled Castes accounted for 27.04 per cent of the jobs and the Scheduled Tribes, 30 per cent — far more than their proportion of the population.
Some 4.7 million projects were taken up over the past three years, roughly half of them relating to water conservation, crucial for a parched population. Other projects relate to irrigation of land owned by the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and others living below the poverty line, as well as rural connectivity and land development.
Yet, even the rural development ministry admits that the scheme’s potential remains only partially fulfilled three years after its launch.
There are reports of funds diversion by some state governments, a nexus between local contractors and government officials, and exploitation of illiterate workers, particularly the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. The names of many dead men and women appear on the scheme’s rolls.
The comptroller and auditor general (CAG) came down heavily on the scheme’s management last year after it spotted inflated reporting of mandays and fund utilisation, and fudged increases in expenditure.
The CAG report also highlighted “shortcomings in monitoring and complaint redressals’’. It cited huge delays in wage payments and the denial of unemployment allowance — owed to registered workers if the government cannot find 100 days’ work for them — to a large number of people.
Development economist Jean Drèze, who conducted a survey of 200 districts in 2006-07, criticised the Centre’s casual attitude towards its own money.
The National Commission on Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector, headed by Rajya Sabha member Arjun Sengupta, found that barring a few states, the number of job-days created per eligible household was only 25 — just a fourth of the guaranteed 100 days.
The scheme has had its share of political controversy too, with both the Congress and the Left claiming to have conceptualised it.
Amid all this, the role of rural development minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh has gone largely unnoticed. Government insiders say that without Singh’s commitment, the programme could have been derailed.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called the scheme “a path-breaking legislation’’ and “a landmark in the economic history” of India. However, if this is not to remain just hyperbole, a lot needs to be done.
There should be a better local planning mechanism – many meaningless projects are now sanctioned just to create work under the scheme. There is a need for proper monitoring to ensure accountability, and for an independent grievance-redress mechanism.
Above all, the scheme’s success depends on the level of local communities’ awareness and initiative, and the government has a big role in creating this environment.