NREGA provides 1,33,00,000 people employment

New Delhi, Jan 31: The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which is going to complete one year tomorrow, has provided employment to over one crore thirty-three lakh people belonging to over 76,000 households in 200 most backward districts in 27 states till December 31, 2006.

The NREGA, which was launched with much fanfare on February 2, last year to free rural India from poverty, has among its beneficiary 45 per cent Scheduled Castes and 32 per cent Scheduled tribes. About 2500 lakh person days of employment has been provided under the programme through execution of about 230000 works of which almost half have been completed.

The work under the NREGA mainly consisted of water and soil conservation, afforestation and land development thus creating durable assets. About 50% of the work are implemented by gram panchayats. Contractors and machinery are out of bounds from NREGA works, which have to be labour intensive with 60% funds being spent on wages alone.

Care has been taken to dispense with apprehensions expressed from time to time about slippage of NREGA funds or robbing the poor workers of their hard earned wages. The Act allows for the public inspection of documents on payment of a fee and regular social audits of scheme's implemenation by the gram sabha. There is also provision of inspection of all works by the block level officials, 10% of works by district level officers and 2% of works by the state level officials.

Moreover, the Rural Development Ministry has been regularly urging state authorities to set up local vigilance and monitoring committees. Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad has repeatedly written to state governments and urged Members of Parliament and other leaders to properly monitor the progress of work in their areas and provide feedback so that the NREGA act would be effectively implemented.

Though it was too early to judge the real impact of NREGA on rural economy as it has just completed one year and was there in only 200 districts only. However, the indications so far are by and large positive. Dr Singh is optimistic of its impact in transforming rural India and remove abject poverty and starvation and free people from the clutches of poverty in the most backward districts. He said in 2007-08, NREGA is going to be implemented in 200 more districts and it will cover the whole country by the end of the UPA government's tenure.

The comparative analysis of various state government's efforts in implementing NREGA was not possible at present as the number of districts covered by NREGA by various states was different. Also the poverty level in states were different and so were the number of people requiring NREGA schemes.

Meanwhile, a web-enabled MIS software has also been developed for application from village to the ministry level which has been provided to all states before launching NREGA.

Monitoring initiative by the Centre includes 137 National Level Monitoring Visits, 29 visits by Area Officers, review meetings and state specific reviews and field inspections as well as independent professional studies. All findings are shared with the states. Funds transfer is being done directly to districts, which are expected to place required amounts with gram panchyatas and other implementing agencies. Moreover, vigilance by NGOs could play a vital role in maintaining transparency and prevent corruption in implementing the scheme.

UNI