Forbes India: Dregs in NREGS

The Roster:

The man

Jean Dreze

The mission

To improve the operation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).

What’s the big deal?

India’s largest social safety net.

Why we need it

To help the rural economy catch up with the cities, the main beneficiaries of economic growth in recent years.

The challenge

Lack of proper field-level records and a mechanism for handling grievances. Need to create locally relevant infrastructure.

What can he do?

As a key influence in the original design of NREGS, Dreze can give ideas to plug loopholes.

People to watch out for

Kaluram Salvi, a village sarpanch in Rajasthan, who has solved some of the problems of NREGS.

Budget highlights

Allocation raised 144 per cent to Rs 39,100.

Kaluram Salvi first came into the limelight in 2002 when he blew his fuse over 50 paise. The labour activist and budding politician was checking out a worker site at Phukiya Thad village in Vijaypura panchayat (council of villages) of Rajasthan. He saw that the officials at the site were paying the workers Rs 59.50 for a day’s work, while the minimum compulsory wage was Rs 60.

Salvi argued with them till the additional money was paid. It was perhaps the turning point in his political career.

Today, with Salvi as the sarpanch (head), Vijaypura has emerged on the national map as a shining example of worker welfare. The grassroots innovations of Salvi and his team has led to a nearly flawless implementation of India’s largest social sector programme — the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).

Salvi’s success has recently got corroborated — the government of Rajasthan now plans to take his ideas across all the NREGS sites in the state to plug leaks and make sure the benefits of the scheme reach the deserving.

PAGE_BREAK

For a scheduled caste man in a multi-caste community, this is a rare achievement. “I only promised to do an honest job of implementing the different government schemes. I did not offer any favours,” Salvi says recalling his election campaign three years ago.

The good news about Salvi’s experiments couldn’t have come at a better time for the Congress-led government at the Centre, which is looking for templates of efficient but caring governance.

NREGS is an attempt launched in 2006 by the Manmohan Singh government to transform the rural economy through legally guaranteed employment for up to 100 days at a minimum wage of Rs. 100 per worker. The scheme, run jointly by the Centre and the states, has reached several milestones towards its goal, but suffers from the same deficiencies of most other official projects — corruption and diversion of funds.

An audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) found that crores spent on the scheme may not have reached the targetted beneficiaries.

NREGS is now ripe for version 2.0, without the leaks and the hassles of the first round. In this context, it is worth pondering how Vijaypura conquered the typical problems and made sure the scheme achieves its purpose.

One of the best judges of NREGS implementation is the development economist Jean Dreze, an Indian of Belgian origin. This luminary from the Delhi School of Economics was a key influence in the original design of NREGS. Dreze has lived and worked in India for 30 years, observing the nuances of the rural economy up close. He thinks experiences such as in Vijaypura present many answers to meet the next set of challenges for NREGS.

There is also a clamour for urban employment guarantee and the use of modern technology to prevent corruption. “Many of these things will happen in due course, but it is important to realise that a lot of ground work still needs to be done to ensure proper implementation of the existing NREGS,” says Dreze.

That’s why the Centre can learn from Vijaypura. More than half of the total 1,600 households in this panchayat have participated in the programme. More than 60 per cent completed the full quota of 100 workdays per household. What’s more, at many sites, women account for a lion’s share of the employment. “People work whole-heartedly because the scheme has given them a sense of dignity and partnership in development,” Salvi asserts.

So what did Salvi do right? Basically, he found simple solutions for complex problems.