Ram Rattan Sharma
The right to work is a basic human right. This concept emphasizes that the people have a human right to work, and they should not be prevented from doing so. The right to work is enshrined in the universal declaration of human rights of the UN and the same in corporates the vision for the economic, social and cultural development. In the Indian constitution the right to work has been referred under the directive principles of state policy article 39, and it urges the state to ensure that the citizens, men and women equally have the right to an adequate means to livelihood and that there is equal pay for equal work for both men and women. Further article 41 stresses that the state shall with in the limits of its economic capacity and development, make effective provision for securing right to work.
Acting in the true constitutional spirit, the Govt. of India enacted legislation in the year 2005, named the National Rural Employment guarantee act which was renamed on 2nd October 2009 as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The act is job guarantee scheme which promises 100 days of employment in a financial year to per house hold, whose members volunteer to do unskilled manual work of minimum wages. The MGNREGA aims to achieve the twin objective of rural development and employment. Thus MGNREGA is a pioneering legislation and is the first committed step towards giving the poor a living wage, and that too as a right. Never before in the development history, has there been an initiative of the nature and magnitude. The scheme envisions transforming the developmental scenario in India. Thus the beauty of the scheme is that it is serving multiple stakeholders in multiple ways. Foremost, it creates social security net by providing guaranteed employment. Secondly, it creates equity by giving right based wage employment programs. Thirdly by giving priority to the natural resource management and emphasizing the creation of durable assets such as water conservation and harvesting, afforestation, rural connectivity, flood control and protection such as construction and repair of embankments, etc, it holds promise for transforming the rural economic growth. It has the in built mechanism for governance reforms, as it operates around the idea of decentralization and promotion of transparency and grass root democracy.
Since the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was launched in 2006. We think it is an appropriate time to look down the line and analysis what this grand project has achieved and where it is lacking. It has a positive impact on the lives of millions of poor people living across our country. It is successful in providing livelihood and security to the targeted group. Another notable achievement of the act is atleast one third of the persons to whom work is allotted are women. The scheme is a milestone in enhancing the decentralized planning process in country and bringing the marginalized sections of the community in the planning process. The scheme highlights the need to regenerate our natural resources under MGNREGA, water and soil conservations, plantation and afforestation has been given priority. We can rate the programme as one of the finest designed employment oriented programme in the world. As has always been the tragedy of well intentioned welfare programmes in India, the MGNREGA also suffers from various institutional failures and weaknesses. the procedure for getting employment under the MGNREGA is lengthy and is riddled with many bureaueratic procedures. Labours are made to fill many forms and since most of them are illiterate; it becomes very difficult; officials concerned with the programme consider MGNREGA as the employment of the last resort than as anti poverty programme; various cases have come to the glare of the public where officials have been caught while maintaining fake muster roles of the labours; they inflate the muster rolls and indulge in corruption of the highest order; lack of information regarding the right to work – various labours are ignorant about their basic rights, which keep the doors open for their corruption, case studies taken in some state have revealed that huge sum of money have been embezzled of the funds of MGNERGA. The social auditss in various states have brought to light many cases where the labours were being paid less wages.
Another serious consequences of shortage of professional staff is that there is little effort at social mobilization without which there is no chance of MGNREGA emerging as a people centred programme, productivity is seen hampered at man work sites. Inadequate implementation of the transparency safeguards like social audit and RTI.
It is indeed one of the best needed welfare programmes for rural India. The only thing our administration and the policy makers need is to plug the loopholes immediately. To eliminate misuse and leakages from its flagship rural employment programme. India could introduce biometric aided identity checks that can be verified remotely. This step would result in checking the misuse of the muster rolls, which is the most prominent draw back in the implementation of the programme. To ensure transparency and accountability, the use of social audit measures should be strengthened. Social audit will ensure peoples involvement is a must and it will trickle down to the lower levels only when the process of social audit is adopted and done through citizens groups and grams sabhas. The MGNREGA programme reformed on these lines holds a bright prospect of not only transforming livelihoods of the poorest people of our country but also heralding a revolution in rural governance in India. MGNREGA is one of the finest pro-poor programmes designed to alleviate the living standards of our village counterparts. MGNREGA will not only empower our rural youth economically but also help in creating sustainable assets. It is not surprising that there has been a steady increase in the number of households benefited by the scheme and no sooner than later our govt. should bring a similar scheme for our urban unemployed youth.
(The Author is former Dy. Librarian, University of Jammu, A Social Activist)
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