The NREGA is a piece of new-age legislation which invokes the framework of legal rights to provide employment in rural areas. The rights framework should, ideally, provide an antidote to government irresponsibility in the form of accountability under the law.
In practice, however, this transition towards an accountable system has not occurred far from it. In our survey, we found that NREGA workers had to put up with numerous infringements of their rights without being able to do much about it: lack of work, delays in wage payment, non-payment of minimum wages, absence of worksite facilities, to cite a few. Most of these irregularities remain unaddressed, often even unnoticed. The persistence of corruption is another aspect of this lack of accountability.
Three related problems have contributed to this state of affairs: confusion about the operational requirements of the Act; absence of any grievance redress system; and lack of independent monitoring.
To start with, there is a troubling lack of clarity about the various actors basic responsibilities under the NREGA. The Act directs each State government to notify an employment guarantee scheme to give effect to the work guarantee. The combination of a Central Act with State-specific schemes (and generally, the complex Centre-State relations behind the NREGA) calls for rigorous coordination between Central and State governments. This is not happening; to illustrate, the Union Ministry of Rural Development does not even have a copy of each of the State schemes. The result is a confusing duality in the source of norms.
Schedules I and II of the NREGA spell out mandatory features of the schemes, for example, the minimum entitlements to be guaranteed. However, most of the State schemes fall short of these norms and fail to define an adequate operational framework to fulfil the work guarantee. In many States, schemes have been notified as a mere formality, and the programme is actually run through oral or written instructions issued from time to time.
The Central government, for its part, has issued operational guidelines on various functional matters such as selection of works, worksite management, payment procedures and record keeping.
Unfortunately, the status of these guidelines is ambiguous. In response to the Comptroller and Auditor Generals (CAG) widely publicised report of widespread non-compliance with the operational guidelines, the Ministry of Rural Development clarified that these guidelines were not binding. With operational guidelines reduced to a best practice template, the NREGA is being implemented in a dangerous vacuum.
One aspect of this vacuum is the absence of clear remedies against infringements of the Act. Curiously, the NREGA talks the language of rights but there is virtual silence on available remedies when rights are violated. So far, the Central and State governments have failed to put in place any system to respond to peoples complaints. Interesting ideas have been floated, such as the appointment of ombudsmen or the activation of lok adalats, but they are yet to see the light of day.
Transparency and accountability rules have been drafted and discussed for months, without getting anywhere. According to the Ministry of Rural Development, the Law Ministry now takes the view that the Central government has no mandate to make such rules under the NREGA an illiterate reading of the Act. Meanwhile, transparency safeguards (including job card maintenance, muster roll norms and social audits) are languishing in the operational guidelines. Since the guidelines are now treated as advisory, these safeguards have no teeth.
A third issue is the lack of independent monitoring of the NREGA, whether in the States or at the Centre. The Central Employment Guarantee Council (CEGC) was intended as an active, powerful, independent monitoring body for the NREGA at the national level. However, the council is virtually non-functional. The performance of the State Employment Guarantee Councils is no better in fact, it is worse in most cases. These watchdogs, too, have no teeth they are not even barking.
Similarly, no independent survey has been conducted so far on a national scale to evaluate the implementation of the Act. It is a mystery why a government that spends about Rs.25,000 crore a year on the NREGA is unable to spare a few crores for an independent evaluation, to find out where the money is going and what the programme is achieving.
The Central government bears a heavy responsibility for this state of affairs. The NREGA is a national Act and about 90 per cent of the funds for works come from the Centre. The Central government is duty-bound under the Act to put in place mandatory operational norms to protect labourers entitlements. Failing that, the new hopes that have been kindled by the NREGA in rural India are likely to be dashed.
Jean Dreze and Siddhartha
