Vol.03, Issue 04, April 2018, Available Online: www.ajeee.co.in/index.php/AJEEE ROLE OF MGNREGA IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT: AN OVERVIEW
Dr. Kumar Amaresh
M.A (Patna University), PhD. Dept. of Economics, L.N.M.U Darbhanga
Abstract:- Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was implemented and came into force on February 2, 2006. It was the first act of its kind in the world wherein an economic safety net is provided to around 2/3rd of the population through a right to work. It is hard to think development of a any nation without the development of its rural economy, neglecting of rural development means neglecting of overall development of nation. The real development of India lies in the economic betterment of people lives in rural India for which government needs to make strong economic policies and better implementing strategies. This research considers the performance of MGNREGA since its inception and examines its objectives, design and the several modifications in it. The purpose is to examine the consistency and effectiveness of this policy. An assessment of the program till date has been performed using secondary data analysis and the intended and non-intended effects and impacts are discussed.
MGNREGA enshrines the legal right of one hundred days of paid employment to any rural household, on employees demand. Though its scope is nationwide, there have been wide inter-state as well as inter district variations in the achievement of the objectives of the MGNREGA Act. In this paper we will study how MGNREGA is a beneficial and effective scheme for the development of rural India. This Act has marked a paradigm shift from the other employment programmes with its right based approach. Govt. is legally accountable for providing employment of hundred days to those who demand it.
1. INTRODUCTION
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was implemented and came into force on February 2, 2006. It was the first act of its kind in the world wherein an economic safety net is provided to around 2/3rd of the population through the right to work.
The scale on which it has been provided is just mindboggling, engaging around 1/10th of the total world population. It was second in a series of right based policies Government of India has rolled out in the past decade. The others are the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the Right to Education (RTE) Act, the Right to Food Act etc. passed in 2005, 2009 and 2013 respectively.
MGNREGA is a social security employment act which guarantees employment to the poor rural people in India. Most important fact about MGNREGA is that it is considered as a right of a rural Indian citizen to work for minimum 100 days in a year if he/she is willing to work and job should be provided to him/her by authorities in his own area and also within a given time- frame (within 15 days) otherwise state government is liable for pay Unemployment allowance. Wages are also well defined in the scheme. In this way,
the legislation for security goes towards guaranteeing the right to employment.
Under MGNREGA, employment is dependent upon the worker exercising the choice to apply for registration, obtain a job card and then to seek employment through a written application for the time and duration chosen by her. The legal guarantee has to be fulfilled within the time limit prescribed and this mandate is underpinned by the provision of unemployment allowance. Incentive structure to the state Government providing employment as 90 percent of the cost of employment provided is borne by the center and there is a concomitant disincentive for not providing employment, if demanded, as the state then bear the double indemnity of unemployment and the cost of unemployment allowance and emphasis on labour-intensive works prohibiting the wage of contractors and machinery.
MGNREGA is demand driven.
Resource transfer under MGNREGA is based on the demand for employment and this provides another critical incentive to the state to leverage the Act to meet the employment needs of the poor. MGNREGA guarantees providing employment within 15 days of demand and the instrument for providing employment is unskilled
Vol.03, Issue 04, April 2018, Available Online: www.ajeee.co.in/index.php/AJEEE manual work selected from the list of
permissible work. This legal guarantee has implication for the way in which works have to be planned. Each applicant apparently gets allocated work within the his own area to build roads, ponds, wells etc.
Only labour-intensive tasks i.e.
without machinery are preferred like creating infrastructure for social benefit like water harvesting, drought relief and flood control etc. Basically villagers had to do such work only which is not economically productive or so it seems by the nature and organization of it.
The MGNREGA act has laudable objectives of providing a work-guarantee to the poor rural households on one hand and creating quality asset, strengthening rural resource base, ensuring social inclusion, and strengthening Panchayati Raj institutions on the other. However, questions have been raised about the timing and purpose of the act, its design and structure, about the logic of state intervention in labour market in an era of liberalization, likely impacts of the programme on asset creation and economy and its overall success.
1.1 Research Methodology
Present study based on exclusively secondary data only, the data for study collected from various sources including various reports, Journal, books, annual reports of rural development and NREGA website.
2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Manoj (2014) in his paper examined that Programme has a major impact on rural area. MGNREGA is playing pivotal role in rural employment generation and enhancing the rural livelihood. It is one of major wage employment initiative which provides at least hundred days of employment in the rural area. The panchayat raj institution played a leading role in planning and implementation of the programme. MGNREGA help generating wage employment in the rural area.
Ashok (2015) examined that rural women are traditionally homebound; the employment guarantee act played a significant role in curbing gender discrimination and empowering rural women. The scheme is attractive
especially for women because it stipulates that one-third of the total workers should be women. Women are found to take this opportunity to freedom from their routine and tiresome family activities. Thus empowerment of women has emerged as an unintended consequence of MGNREGA. Also depicts that 90 per cent of the surveyed respondent believe that their social status is improved after joining in this programme, especially for widows. They got more self-respect than the earlier period. People are able to mingle with others, share their feelings, and increase their participation in Gram Sabha. All this happened only after joining in this programme.
Das (2015) finds that the MGNREGA expands wage and consumption of the family units thought about over the pre MGNREGA period and the plan essentially improves the social and financial basic leadership energy to women in the men commanded rural culture. Hence the scheme ensures improved standard of living of the vulnerable poor, more specifically among women. It additionally finds that poor work site resource, hot climate condition and reduction of spare time put them much hardship during the working hours of MGNREGA.
Yadav (2015) recognized that the process outcomes include strengthening grass - root processes of democracy and infusing transparency and accountability in governance. It has enabled rural people with sufficient purchasing power and they are able to at least to supports their basic necessity i.e. food. The Act has limited the rural poor to their areas and stopped migration to the cities. It is not only giving rural livelihoods but also involving them in other non-agricultural work. This has helped in handling disguised workers.
Employment in other non-agricultural work will also improve the rural infrastructure i.e. rural asset building. It will ultimately lead to sustainable development.
2.1 Problem of Rural Areas
As we know the 60-70 percent of rural population in India lives in primal conditions and more than 66 percent of the country’s labour force in engaged in agriculture. About 22 percent of India’s population in rural areas were found
Vol.03, Issue 04, April 2018, Available Online: www.ajeee.co.in/index.php/AJEEE below the poverty line in the year 2011-
2012. People residing in the rural areas are facing a lot of problems. Most of them depend on farms as it is their main source of income, this can also be attributed to the low level of basic and manufacturing industry. Lack of job opportunity and lack of investment options are other major problems in these areas.
Without investment options and facilities, many farms and small businesses would die. So in the present scenario there is an urgent need of rural development programmes. Rural Development programme through MGNREGA The thrust of India’s anti- poverty programme has been changing.
The land and assets-based approach of the 1970s gave way to income and employment-based programme in the 1980s. Some of the important programmes were: National Rural Employment Programme (NREP) 1980-89;
Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme(RLEGP) 1983-89; Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY) 1989-99;
Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS) 1993-99; Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana(JGSY) 1999-2002; Sampoorna Gramme Rozgar Yojana (SGRY) since September 2001 and National Food for Work Programme(NFFWP) since 14 November 2004.
SGRY and NFFWP were merged with the MGNREGS in 2006. Since the Mahatma Gandhi NREGA was launched, every year about 5 crore households, mostly in the rural area are getting employment under this programme. This represents almost one-fourth of the total rural households in the country. Through MGNREGA, the government in India has successfully integrated a sustainable development programme. It is a right-base poverty reduction programme into the India Constitution.
The main purpose of this Scheme is to bring the landless families in the social security net. The government through this Act aims at removing poverty in the rural areas and improve their Infrastructure. MGNREGA has provided them with an alternate means of employment, with the dignity of labour. In addition to wages, impact assessment of MGNREGA by various entities has shown that over 10 lakh households have benefited from the development of work
on private land resulting in higher income, better crop intensity, shift to crops offering higher returns and an improvement in overall asset quality.
2.2 Objectives
The main aim of this study is to assess the generation of employment and how far the poverty is alleviated and the definite objectives are as per following:
1. To analyse the role of MGNREGA for Generation of employment in Rural India.
2. To know the viability of MGNREGA for Rural Growth.
3. How MGNREGA able to alleviate the status of poor rural people.
3. DISCUSSION
India is a second larger populated country in the world. Nearly 70% of total population of the country lives in rural areas. So, rural development is the most important factor for the overall development of the country. Many institutional reforms and plans had adopted after independence for the rural development. The set up the Panchayati Raj system was one of the most significant event in Indian democracy system for the development of grass roots level. It is taking significant role for the all kinds of development in rural India.
Another side many plans had been adopted during the different five years plan for the improvement of rural socio- economic status.
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act”, (MGNREGA), an employment granted scheme which effected by legislation on August 25, 2005 as a name of “National Employment Guarantee Act. The main objective of this scheme is to provide employment for economic empowerment of the rural people at least 100 days in a financial year. The basic economic activity of rural areas is that agriculture but it affected by seasonality.
After completing the crop showing and harvesting in a year three or four months people are facing unemployment.
So the seasonal unemployment and the disguised unemployment are the main forms of unemployment. From this experienced government was understood that create the employment facility in rural areas able to remove the
Vol.03, Issue 04, April 2018, Available Online: www.ajeee.co.in/index.php/AJEEE unemployment. The MGNREGA is not
only able to generate of employment facility also applicable to change the socioeconomic, political and ecological set up of a particular region.
4. FINDINGS
1. The wages rate Rs. 183 is too low in comparison to the present market rate of wages
2. Although the Government has promised 100 days guaranteed employment to the Job card holders, practically Job card holders are given much lesser no of work-days in the year.
3. Since the wages rate is too low in comparison to the present wages rate in the area, many efficient workers migrate to the other private employers leaving the Job cards with the less efficient members of the family.
4. The work site facilities provided to the Job card holders are just negligible.
5. No unemployment allowances are paid to the beneficiaries including delayed payment.
6. The information provided in the schematic display board is not sufficient to understand the details of the scheme.
7. Procedure of selection of mate is not maintained.
8. All Job card holders are not provided job. Job demands are not recorded. Most of Job cards are not kept in the custody of the Job card holders.
9. The Job card holders are not aware about the unemployment allowances.
10. Assets created by the programme suffer from lack of maintenance.
There are even cases where the assets are not handed over to the concerned body for maintenance.
11. The Technical manpower is not sufficient in execution level. Most of them are employed in contractual basis except Junior Engineers.
5. SUGGESTIONS FOR CHANGES IN THE MGNREGA
The objective of the MNREGA is to enhance the livelihood security of the
rural people by providing 100 days of guaranteed employment but it is evident from the statistics that the 100 days of guaranteed employment is not being provided by the state governments and the average number of employment days is very less, when compared to the statutory provision (100).
If the state governments take adequate measures to ensure that the 100 days of guaranteed employment is provided to the rural household, it will lead to additional income to the rural household, which will bear a positive impact on their development. New provision for providing free lunch for the workers at the worksite must be included into the legislation, doing this will enhance the food security of the rural household and it will save the additional cost which was incurred for their lunch, therefore leading to additional income at their disposal, and increased purchasing power.
6. CONCLUSIONS
Although MGNREGA claims to be the largest rural development programme in the world; but in reality the scheme has not been able to touch the heart of the ultimate upgradation of the rural economy. The poor have remained poor, and the vision of MGNREGA has remained in papers & files only. The potentials of the schemes have not been capitalized in the expected manner over the years. It can be safely asserted that if the schemes under MGNREGA are properly implemented, then it may totally change the rural landscape so as to make the Indian economy a much stronger one in all respects.
The present Government both at the center and state will definitely look into the matter and take positive steps in this regards. The MNREGA programme has enabled the rural household to increase their purchasing power, lead a quality and heathy life with all the basic facilities and provide education to their children and several other benefits. The MNREGA has enabled the rural household by the additional income to go an extra mile and spend for a better quality of life. The MGNREGA is not only a labour act to provide the employment the rural people; it is the combination of
Vol.03, Issue 04, April 2018, Available Online: www.ajeee.co.in/index.php/AJEEE the different schemes and bearing the
multi-dimensional action plan.
The proper implement of the scheme can able to enhance the socio- economic and environmental sustainability of the rural area of india.
All these provisions in the act make MGNREGA more inclusive. In the villages, the infrastructure is created which is of prime importance for the development of the rural as well as the urban areas.
However, the government needs to amend the MGNREGA to provide more employment for unskilled manual work regularly.
So it is recommended that the present programme should be further spread in the rural areas by means of proper planning, adequate supervision and effective implementation and better monitoring so that the country will get fruitful benefit and helps to overcome from unemployment, reduced migration, reduces poverty etc.
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