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NREG Act
The NREG Act 2005 provides enhancement of livelihood security, giving at least 100days of guaranteed wage employment in every financial year to every household, whoseadult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. Panchayats at districts,intermediate and village levels will be the principal authorities for planning andimplementation of the scheme.The NREGA has been extended to all the 600 districts in the country. The extension hasbeen expedited, though. It might have been a political decision, but it cannot be objectedto on that count. The only possible point against it in principle could have been theadditional financial burden involved; but it should not be a major issue at this point fortwo reasons.First, a programme of this kind, if administered well, would be exactly the antidote to the‘jobless growth’ problem. There is growth that is not percolating down to the poor, taxrevenues are booming, and the best use of available public resources would be to provide jobs to the poor. Second, the additional expenditure should not be too large since thebudget did provide a tidy sum for the implementation of SGRY (Sampoorna GrameenRozgar Yojana) in the non-NREGA districts; NREGA is likely to effectively replaceSGRY in those districts.There are a few caveats, however. Being the ‘flagship’ scheme of the present government,it is sometimes being pushed too much. There are areas where market wages are higherthan the wage rate fixed under the programme; such places would naturally exhibit littledemand for it. But the strong pressure exerted to show ‘good results’ is a sure recipe formisutilisation of funds. The happiest situation would be when no one would require jobsunder this scheme.Since this is a demand-driven programme, targets should be a no-no unless they can bescientifically tailored to specific areas. Further, despite stronger safeguards, as comparedto the earlier employment programmes, there are reports of inadequate awareness orimplementation, as also leakage. These problems have to be looked into in detail and theloopholes plugged.Finally, and this point has often been made, NREGA requires greater administrativeefforts as compared to the earlier schemes, particularly at the level of PRIs (panchayatiraj institutions) that are responsible for the final implementation, and hence the funds setapart for the purpose are quite inadequate. This genuine problem must be attended to.Whether it was “an unofficial proclamation of elections” or a “graduation gift” or“wastage of money” or “revolutionary act for the poor”, there is no doubt that theannouncement of the extension of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme(NREGS) to the entire country is a welcome step. But the manner in which it was doneexposes the Congress party’s attempt to derive political mileage out of it. Wasn’t thegovernment supposed to extend it to all the districts anyway over a period of five years?
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