A scene from the South

A social audit of the NREGA in Villupuram district in Tamil Nadu in July 2007 and a field survey in Surguja district in Chhattisgarh in June 2008, conducted as part of the six-States survey, brought out to this writer the contrasts between Chhattisgarh and Tamil Nadu.

In Chhattisgarh there were many lapses in implementation, including the involvement of contractors, the fudging of muster rolls, corruption in material usage, low scale of work, and delays in wage payment.

Tamil Nadu, on the other hand, has taken measures to address these problems. It has successfully kept out machines and contractors through close monitoring and strict action against any breach of the ban on both under the NREGA.

Another reason for Tamil Nadus success is the stipulation (under Tamil Nadus employment guarantee scheme) that only works devoid of any material component be taken up. (The Act allows up to 40 per cent expenditure on material costs.) The material component tends to give private contractors a foothold as they provide engineering expertise the gram panchayats may not have. The possibility of doing away with the material component arises partly from the fact that Tamil Nadu has a vast network of canals and other traditional water-harvesting structures. The repair and maintenance of these structures is a vast source of useful, labour-intensive work.

If the Act requires that at least 50 per cent of the works be taken up by gram panchayats, the Tamil Nadu scheme stresses that all NREGA works be managed by gram panchayats. In Chhattisgarh, there is more reliance on the line departments (for example, the Irrigation Department or the Forest Department), which tend to be less accountable than gram panchayats. Tamil Nadu also avoids delays in wage payment by a well-rehearsed routine of payment on a fixed day every week. In Chhattisgarh, by contrast, delays in wage payments cause great hardship to workers, to the extent that some of them have given up NREGA work. In one work implemented by the Forest Department in Udaipur block, people had not been paid for almost a year.

Tamil Nadu has put in place a good monitoring system. For instance, every worker is required to put his signature or thumb impression on the muster roll every day (by way of marking attendance), making it difficult to fudge muster rolls. The employment guarantee assistant (Makkal Nalla Panniyalar) in each gram panchayat is expected to phone the block office every day before 10 a.m. to report worksite attendance figures. This information is immediately collated at the district level and officials from different departments do random checks the same day to verify these reports.

In Chhattisgarh, there was no regular monitoring of muster rolls or worksite attendance. At many worksites, the official muster rolls were not available. In Kedma panchayat of Udaipur block, our survey found that more than half of all entries in one set of muster rolls of a completed worksite were fake.

Most importantly, in Tamil Nadu a strong message has been sent from the top that NREGA works are unlike other schemes and that corruption will not be tolerated. This has been done by taking strict action against panchayat presidents, employment guarantee assistants and block development officers who have been found guilty of major fraud. The seeds of such a change could be seen in Chhattisgarh: on the basis of a social audit in Mareya panchayat (Udaipur block) in June 2008, a complaint was lodged with the district authorities and strict action was taken.

To be sure, Tamil Nadu has its own set of problems, including politicisation and some corruption in NREGA works, conflicts over non-payment of minimum wages, low worker productivity, lack of worksite facilities, unmet demand for work and lack of community monitoring. Nevertheless, Tamil Nadu has achieved some success in providing employment on a large scale, paying wages on time and avoiding mass corruption.

Another special feature of the NREGA in Tamil Nadu is that an overwhelming majority (about 80 per cent) of NREGA workers are women. Most of them have no comparable work opportunities in the private sector.

Indeed, Tamil Nadus strong tradition of active involvement in the social sector is finding a new expression through the NREGA. There is much to learn from this experience, just as Tamil Nadu itself has much to learn from pioneering experiences elsewhere.

Karuna Muthiah