Social Justice and Inclusion Within the Right-based Universal Workfare Programme with Self-selection: Lessons and Ways Forward from the Participation of SCs and STs in MGNREGA in Karnataka

MGNREGA is a right-based universal, demand-driven workforce programme with self-selection, providing 100 days of guaranteed employment and productive asset to the poor households (HHs). Its universalism assured unlimited resources to satisfy any demand and hard manual labour ensured that only poor would like to access it by design. The programme earmarked 33 per cent share for women but did not as a right or policy incorporate any definite share or affirmative action for the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SCs/STs) like other flagship programmes of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) or Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDU-GKY). In the light of the above paradigm, this study explores as to how far this programme had accommodated the interests and requirements of the SCs/STs in Karnataka, providing equitable wage work and productive sustainable assets by building their awareness, providing them equitable space in participatory planning and grassroots monitoring, augmenting their capability to demand work and enabling them to self-select, and in case of breach of their rights approaching accountability through social audit or Ombudsman. The study finds low awareness, low grassroots participation in planning and monitoring, and inequitable participation of SCs/STs in both wage employment and assets. The study finds exclusion of SCs/STs from the assets sharper and more pronounced than their exclusion in wage employment. The study finds evidence that a right-based workfare programme with self-selection alone was incapable of being a substitute for earmarking (reservation, affirmative action) and protecting the interests of SC/ST HHs. The study finds that promotional goals included in the guidelines do not by themselves translate into formal actions, monitorable outputs and outcomes. Our primary data also show that the socio-economic and political predicament of SC/ST HHs justified a case for definite affirmative action for them. The study gathers primary and secondary evidences to show that in Karnataka, the programme failed the test of social justice and inclusion proportionate to the disabilities and need of SCs/STs and required immediate attention and policy responses.