More than a decade ago Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was passed by the Parliament and the State of Jammu and Kashmir also decided to implement it. The MGNREGA aims at enhancing the livelihood security of people in rural areas by guaranteed hundred days of wage employment in a financial year to a rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. This Act is an effort of giving practical shape to Gandhi ji’ philosophy of how to develop rural India. In the words of the Father of the Nation, real India lives in her villages. Unless our villages progressed and became the real hub of development, India would not come up as a prosperous and welfare state. There are other developmental schemes also authored either by the Centre or State, yet the MGNREGA has been considered as the most useful and viable scheme that would go a long way in reconstructing our rural economy.
As per Section 30, Schedule 1 of the MGNREGA, J&K was supposed to appoint Ombudsman for each district for receiving grievances, enquiring into the same and passing awards. Moreover, as per Section 19 of the Act, the State was required to frame Grievance Redressal Rules to determine appropriate grievance redressal mechanism and lay down procedure for disposal of complaints. The Act stipulated bringing into life two institutions through which the objectives of the Act would be pursued systematically. One was the appointment of Ombudsman, one each for the 22 districts of the State and the second was establishment of independent Social Audit Unit. These are mandatory clauses of the Act and as such the State Government had the responsibility of establishing both institutions along with the declaration that the Act would be made operative for the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The appointment of Ombudsmen is to be done through the Selection Committee headed by Financial Commissioner Planning Department. Like last year’s session of the Legislative Assembly, the question of appointment of these two institutions also came up again in the March Budget Session. The Minister in charge of Rural Development said on the floor of the House that the process of selection and appointments had been initiated and soon after the Session the process might come to final end.
This commitment has met the fate which most of other commitments have been facing under the Coalition Government headed by PDP-BJP combine. Appointment of Social Audit Unit has been considered necessary to maintain transparency and accountability. Unfortunately despite lapse of a decade, no step worth the name has been taken either in the area of appointment of Ombudsman or constituting Social Audit Unit. Government’s apathy towards implementing all clauses of the scheme ends up in the loss of the ordinary people of the State. We fail to understand how this Government can claim to convert the State into a welfare State where social justice is done to one and all and especially to those who have been either marginalized or deliberately ignored. In early August 20, 2016 the Government constituted a Selection Committee headed by Financial Commissioner, Planning, Development and Monitoring Department for selection of Ombudsmen. Applications were invited and scrutinized and short listed and the candidates were told that short listed ones would be called for interview. However, interviews have not been held and a number of technical obstructions are raised to the selection of Ombudsmen. A Government that is not able to realize the utility of implementing the scheme in toto, is not favourably disposed to the people of the State. The Government is unable to justify prolonged delay and dilly-dallying of interviews and appointment of Ombudsmen. People demand the Rural Development Department to answer two questions. One is why it has delayed initiating the implementing process for more than a decade and the second question is why interviews for selection of Ombudsmen are not conducted. Besides this, the Government owes answer to the people to the question why there is general apathy and non-seriousness in implementing MGNREGA.
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