Poor feedback delays NREGA revamp

Poor response from the National Level Monitors (NLMs) engaged in monitoring the implementation of India’s largest job guarantee scheme, National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), is likely to delay the planned revamp of the scheme.

The country’s Rural Development Ministry had engaged over 260 NLMs for monitoring the NREGS in 330 districts where it was first implemented in 2006. Additional monitoring agencies were engaged to cover the remaining 274 districts after the scheme was extended in April 1, this year.

The Ministry had asked the monitors, who are retired defence and civilian employees with adequate experience in administration of developmental works, for their independent assessment of the scheme’s implementation.

“NLMs are submitting their status reports, but it will take some time for all the reports to come in,” India’s Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said.

According to him, the Ministry has extended the earlier deadline of June 15 to June 30 for the for NLMs to submit their reports on the NREGA implementation.

Stressing that NREGA is a huge scheme and needs constant and effective monitoring at the grassroots level, Singh said that the Ministry will scrutinise these reports and will identify the loopholes that require corrective measures.

“By first week of July, the reports will be compiled for discussion in the Ministry, and directives will then be sent to the respective states for taking appropriate action,” he said.

The scheme, aimed at helping out over 270 million of India’s poorest of the poor, provided jobs to over 30 million households in 330 districts in 2007-08.

The number of beneficiaries is likely to go up to 60 million households in the current fiscal after being rolled out in the remaining 274 districts.

The Minister, while admitting to difficulties in ensuring transparency in implementing the scheme, said the onus lay on the state governments in playing a proactive role in its execution.

“Though centrally funded, the states are the real agencies to ensure the scheme is effectively implemented so that the benefits percolate to the targeted sections of society,” the Minister said.

The Minister said that he was open to healthy criticism from all stakeholders and urged them to join us in removing loopholes.

The rural job scheme has drawn flak not only from the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) but also from ruling United Progressive Alliance Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and her parliamentarian son Rahul Gandhi for NREGA faulty implementation.

Rahul Gandhi, who is also a Congress general secretary, had in April led a crowd to the commissioner’s residence in Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh after the people complained of difficulty in getting jobs.

It may be recalled that a Jharkhand social activist Lalit Mehta was murdered recently after a team of volunteers from Delhi and elsewhere began their audit of NREGA works in Chainpur and Chhattarpur Blocks of Palamau district in May.

He was an active member of the social audit team led by noted economist Jean Dreze, which was involved in exposing malpractices in the execution of the NREGA schemes in the district.

The mutilated body of Mehta, an engineer turned social activist was recovered on a roadside in Palamu district village of the state on May 14, while his bike, cash worth Rs 12,000, mobile phone and other documents were reported missing.