Abstract
At the very beginning entire team of contributors is to be complimented for their effort to highlight various aspects of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme MGNREGA—both positive and negative, which will help in making corrections and modifications in the programme. Also the book is extremely timely as the Ministry of Rural Development is in the process of bringing about certain changes for better implementation, and therefore the insights presented in this book will be useful to the policy-makers.
The chapters in the book are classified into different subsections which addresses the following issues:
Why we need MGNREGA; and puts it in a broader developmental context. How it is being implemented in different parts of the country. What are its impacts? What can be the future prospects associated with this programme?
MGNREGA has been relatively much more successful as compared to any other employment generation programme in the past, and this can be attributed to both economic and political factors. High economic growth but rising inequality, decline in the incidence of poverty but absolute number of poor remaining almost stagnant, decline in share of agriculture in GDP but more than half of the workforce still depending on agriculture—all these contradictions necessarily point towards impoverishment and great economic hardship of the working masses. Employment elasticity during the last decade of rapid economic growth has not been rising, and in fact, declining in many sectors. Declining employment elasticity calls for effective promotion of labour intensive sectors and the opening paper by Indira Hirway identifies the ways and means of achieving productive and sustainable employment generation through proper implementation of this programme. Gerry Rodgers in fact argues that MGNREGA should not be seen as merely as an employment goal, but rather should be expressed as development goal encompassing different policy parameters. Citing various international experiences Eduardo and Alarcon argued that such large scale programmes exert tremendous pressure on national capacities and institutions and therefore for any successful implementation local institutions should have the capacity to implement it. Therefore, all the three papers in the first section tries to put MGNREGA in a broader perspective (not limiting it to a rights-based approach) and links this programme with overall sustainable development through people’s participation. Good economic logic often fails to yield the desired results if it is not backed by political will. The book therefore correctly identifies the strong political compulsion of the Congress Party to get back its pro-poor image as one of the success factors.
Section 2 looks into the working/implementation of MGNREGA across different regions of the country through primary field-based survey. The overarching message that emerges from this section is that in spite of being a demand driven programme, for successful implementation of MGNREGA, either the State or civil society has to play a leading role. If either of them is found lacking, this programme is never going to achieve its stated objective given the extremely low ability of the poor to realise their entitlements. The first chapter in this section (Chapter 5) analyses the implementation of MGNREGA and delivery gaps in selected areas of Bihar and Jharkhand. Both these states are relatively backward States with low agricultural productivity, low human development achievements, and low per capita income. Also, a considerable proportion of the population in these two states belongs to the marginalised groups. Though this programme is universal across rural India, the marginalised groups are the ones who are likely to benefit maximum from this programme. In both the States, SCs and STs were the major beneficiaries of this programme. Lack of government initiative and civil society intervention has primarily resulted in poor implementation of this programme in the state.
An interesting fact brought out by this study is the decline in the proportion of households at successive stages of implementation of this programme—right from awareness up to getting jobs. For instance, in Bihar, 94 per cent of surveyed households were aware about this programme, 72 per cent were interested, but only 25 per cent ended up getting jobs. Lower literacy, low administrative abilities at local levels and the absence of civil society mobilisation have been sighted as possible reasons for this enormous demand and delivery gap. However, this being a primary field research based study, the paper should have been more specific in pointing out the lacunae/drawbacks at different stages of this programme (may be through case studies). Moreover, there is no social group-wise segregation of days of employment, wages, period of payment of wages in the paper for the villages surveyed. This would have really highlighted the extent to which the marginalised groups have benefited from the programme, and would have further enriched the analysis.
The study on Rajasthan in the following chapter brings out more succinctly the ground realities associated with the implementation of this programme. One of the primary reasons why Rajasthan is doing much better in various aspects of implementation of this programme is the awareness among the masses through right to work movements which had been organised by various civil society organisations for several years prior to the implementation of this programme. What is really interesting about this study is that through case study evidence it brings out the local power dynamics, and hence, it points out that Rajasthan is no way better than poor performing states in terms of corruption and malpractices associated with this programme (paying bribes to the sarpanch, the sarpanch preferring his own associates in providing employment, etc.). Despite corruption at the local level, high degree of awareness among local people facilitated through long history of civil society intervention has resulted in better implementation of this programme in the state.
The success in Andhra Pradesh can be primarily attributed to the synergy between local administration and civil society organisations. Lack of demand for work has been cited as the principal reason for poor implementation of this programme in the Punjab (mentioned in Chapter 8). Despite having the highest Scheduled Caste (SC) population among major states, implementation of this programme has been rather lacklustre, and this according to the authors has been due to high demand in agriculture during peak season (three months) during which agricultural wages are thrice that of MGNREGA wages, and work availability in construction sector in urban and semi-urban areas during the rest of the season. However, if this had been the case then unemployment rate in Punjab should have been lower than the national average. This is not the case, and therefore deserves some explanation.
Creation of productive assets and ensuring rural livelihood are among the primary objectives of this programme. The following section brings into focus the impact of this programme on a whole range of parameters in rural India and comes out with some very constructive policy recommendations based on grass-root evidence from various micro-studies. Analysing different kinds of works undertaken in this programme Amita Shah (Chapter 9) noted that issues concerning durability and future maintenance of the assets created remain un-addressed and more emphasis is given on work selection rather than on future management mechanisms of the works already carried out. This will inhibit sustainable development of rural areas and this programme will remain only as an employment generation programme without any developmental objective. For MGNREGA to play an important role in rural development she recommended convergence of this programme with various other developmental programmes without substituting funds earmarked for MGNREGA. The importance on convergence was highlighted in the following chapter as well (Chapter 10) by T. Haque who further argued that in the absence of proper education and skill training of local people at village level the potential of durable assets created under this programme will remain under-utilised.
Collating various micro-level studies related to impact of MGNREGA on agricultural labour market, and agricultural output, D. N. Reddy (Chapter 11) noted that the blanket blame on MGNREGA for labour shortages and higher wages in agriculture could not be established from the evidence emanating from such micro-level studies. Studies have indicated that peak-time agricultural wages and several types of non-agricultural wages were much higher than MGNREGA wages. The process of agricultural mechanisation has been going on for the last two–three decades and this has resulted in reduced days of employment for the migrant workers which in turn has discouraged migration for agricultural work. The often quoted argument that MGNREGA has resulted in labour shortage causing mechanisation is not always the case. The paper therefore correctly suggested that though the micro-level studies should not be generalised they are at least indicative of emerging trends. The author pointed out that in general some procedural changes like labour calendar at the regional level (basically indicating peak agricultural season during which MGNREGA should be suspended) can correct this problem of labour shortage in agriculture.
The female participation in MGNREGA has been much higher than the stipulated minimum of one-third and this has resulted in empowerment of women giving them increased consumption options, and more importantly increased participation in household decision making. This has been an unintended positive outcome of this programme (Chapter 12). However, greater awareness campaigns and grass-root mobilisation are needed to bring about a significant change in socio-economic participation of females.
Finally, the last section deals with governance issues associated with the implementation of this programme. Inadequate support structure at the grass-root level has been the primary reason why outcomes have fallen short of expectations. In addition to grass-root mobilisation, creation of a national authority for monitoring, and proper deployment of human resources has been suggested to achieve the twin objectives of creating productive assets through employment generation.
This book is a must-read for policy-makers (who can try and implement policy changes in order to bring down the loopholes in the present system) as well researchers who can get a clearer picture on what to evaluate, how to evaluate and how to place a specific national programme in the larger framework of development economics.