By Ishaan Sengupta
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 was passed in the winter session of the Parliament in the mentioned year. The Act was formed to provide a fair chance to the abled work force in Rural India with deserved quantifiable wages as fast as possible. It is An Act to provide for the enhancement of livelihood security of the households in rural areas of the country by providing at least one hundred days of guaranteed wage employment in every financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do Unskilled manual work and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.
The people who work under this Act get Job cards which provide the moderators with proof of the days of work done by the applicant and the extent at which the work has been completed. The Act has made the confirmation of the work permit of the applicant mandatory and rejecting a persons application due to causes other than discrepancies in the form punishable under the law and the applicant is to receive an unemployment allowance to provide for the work not successfully provided by the State Government authorities.
The recent major advantages as mentioned in The Uncertain Glory, which has been written by Amartya Sen, and Jean Dreze (the primary drafter of the Act) are:
Firstly the rural participation in this act has shown outstanding records. The MGNREGA or the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Act which when extended to the entire country attracted about 50 million rural works according to official data.
Secondly the awareness of the act has also enabled people in the rural sectors to understand the concept of minimum wage and with combined implementation of the RTI has made them question the authorities against corruption.
Thirdly the NREGA act does not concentrate itself to the earlier BPL allocation of schemes, which undoubtedly hampered the people who would fall under the Density effect, that is people who were above the minimum wage rate but were so close to it that their standard of living was not so much better than the BPL people.
Fourthly the Act has also motivated the removal of gender barriers and caste barriers. The Act has tried to remove the prejudice against the preexisting discrimination and provides opportunities to a family. Women have been extremely motivated to do physical labor and sustain their families.
The Basic purpose of the Act, according to Dreze was, to provide a security to people who could not sustain the living of them or their families. Famines, Droughts have led to consistent and persistent suicides, which do no good to the society. Another important purpose was to provide the people with a strong minimum wage rate to sustain the living of the people.
Even though the advantages are immense, every policy does have an unimpressive side too. The Criticisms are completely valid. According to Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, NREGA is just playing with mud, the reason being the inefficiency of the act to provide skills, which can in turn increase the growth rate of the country in the long run. The basic targeting of the act towards unskilled labour somehow neglects the cultural skills like sericulture, handicrafts etc. side of rural India.
The second more important disadvantage being the fact that, there has been consistent Corruption and lack of accountability, which has led to disastrous results of the amount of benefits, received. A common practice is the inclusion of phony names of people who have worked and the receipt of wages by them. The moderators to pocket in the money have included these phony names, which was to be received by the workers. Some of the workers have also been told that the wage, which was to be received by them, would be adjusted with the next weeks wages.
Andhra Pradesh has taken steps to curb such corrupt practices by involving social audits and worker grievance seminars to have a detailed discussion about the execution of the Act.
Jean Dreze says that Maharashtra also had an employment act earlier but it was completely outcaste due to the amount of corruption. In the end it is the corruption, which drives this act to its darkest depths. There is no doubt that this Act has tried to consider a certain part of social welfare but there is much more that can be done to maximize its full potential.