Pankaj Prashar
In 2005 Govt. of India passed a bill regarding employment to unskilled workers in the rural areas of India. In the very first round, this scheme was launched in around 200 districts of India. National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) which at a later stage became Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The Act received the assent of the President on 5th September, 2005.As published in the Gazette of India”An Act to provide for the enhancement of livelihood security of the households in rural areas of the country by providing at least one hundred days of guaranteed wage employment in every financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto”.The only objective of this scheme is to provide hundred days of guaranteed employment to poor unskilled people with in a distance of 15 km from the place of their residence so that they don’t move to nearby cities in search of work.In order to give effect to this Act, every State Government shall, within six months from the date of commencement of this Act, by notification, make a scheme, for providing to every household in the rural areas covered under the scheme, who is above 18 years and is able to do manual unskilled work,guaranteed wage employment with in his village not less than one hundred days in a financial year. If an applicant doesn’t receive employment with in fifteen days of receipt of his application under the approved scheme, he shall be entitled to a daily unemployment allowance as per the rates specified by the Government. The other perspective of this scheme is to empower and frame new water harvesting structures like ponds, small water storage hubs, check dams, village roads and other related jobs which otherwise is performed by laborers from near bye states. The Mahatma Gandhi NREGA sponsors various schemes and projects for helping rural people below the poverty-line for creation of wage employment and productive assets. As per the information available with NREGASoft, around 30 lakh assets are created annually during a financial year under Mahatma Gandhi NREGA. MoRD proposes to use GIS solutions to visualize, analyze and explore such asset related data and also manage them more effectively along with better understanding of their impact/outcome. Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical information system (GIS) can be effectively used to collect, store and analyze Mahatma Gandhi NREGA assets (Watershed locations, Farm ponds, percolation tanks, check dams, road layer, Irrigation Channels etc) . With the use of GIS in the area of asset management, it is possible to visualize and understand the geographical context of an asset and improve the efficiency of asset management. Spatial location is a major common aspect of all the asset data and GIS can map all the assets along with information for visualization and proper decision making. Implementing GIS in the Mahatma Gandhi NREGA can be helpful in providing a single and integrated view of asset information system pan rural India. GIS enabled portal (e-Governance) will act as a gateway to facilitate and coordinate the exchange and sharing of geospatial data between stakeholders from various jurisdictional levels in the spatial data community. This will facilitate to search, locate and publish geospatial data. The GIS enabled portal will maintain process, store, distribute and improve the utilization of geospatial data for planners, decision makers and general public.
Benefits of implementing GIS in MGNREGA
To MGNREGA workers: They will be able to get information about availability of work in the near locations, work site location information, real time transparent attendance, and payment information.
To Citizens: By enabling Geo Portal for MGNREGA assets, the solution will generate demands, suggestions, critiques and data for both citizen and agency involved. This will enhance concurrent social audit by citizen and facilitate feedback information on current status of work, quality validation, etc. to the DPC/State Government who are implementing the program.
To Central/ State Government/ PRIs/Programme Officers: Incorporation of GIS technology will allow setting up of triggers for these set of stakeholders. When the Government officer with appropriate GPS enabled simple device enters or leaves the boundaries defined by the MGNREGA asset, a text message or email alert is sent. All stakeholders can see the geographical location of assets on a map in the web management system. Oversee the design, development, testing, deployment and maintenance of effective GIS solutions for MGNREGA and their efficient integration with overall MGNREGA system.
E-Government: With the implementation of GIS, there will be a single window-access to spatial and non spatial data for full integration of geospatial data with various others ongoing and existing databases of Government.
Budget preparation and Duplication:-GIS can play a significant role in planning for projects which will help in preparing labour budget and monitoring future progress of works. It will also help in avoiding duplication of works as all works will be available with their geographic coordinates. GPS Coordinates from field will help to locate structures in Web-GIS as well as in Google Map.
An interactive web based GIS management System will maintain entire information of MGNREGA assets. The system will allow users to create new data, update existing data related to assets, generate queries, spatial query such as buffer, reports, maps, etc. This will help the Department in possessing a valuable digital database (both spatial and non-spatial) for the entire country. Properly defined customized queries will also be made available for day-to-day planning and management of the MGNREGA assets. Country’s prominent institutes NRSC and ISRO can help to develop and deploy a MGNREGA Geo-portal along with geo tagged assets data and report generating tools. For field level usage a customized Android Mobile App for Geo-tagging of complete assets will be developed which will help to locate and update the ongoing work at the actual site and also keep a track of the work and worker for future references. Trainings, Workshops and Capacity Building programs need to be conducted for proper implementation and functioning.
Application of GIS in MGNREGA projects can help by tracking and covering all stages of MGNREGA right from allotment and initiation of work, muster roll, measurement of work to closer of work for better monitoring of MGNREGA functionaries performance and creation of assets, better tracking and better reporting of location-specific events through time and location. This will integrate textual and spatial records and also helpful in easy verifications of contours and boundaries of MGNREGA asset to perform various Spatial-Correlation and MIS functions. With this initiative repetition and hocus-pocus in the projects can be mitigated and hence a transparency can be brought to the entire system. GIS can be a better way, a better solution for curbing corruption in MGNREGA because with its implementation a cashless payment mode can also be adopted for transferring funds directly to the workers’ account. Since Bharat (India) is stepping towards digital mode and in this context GIS and GIS analyst can help a little in transforming the nation to a Digital nation.
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