Job plan falls short of targets

Despite tall pronouncements, the vote-catching Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has fallen short of its targets. NREGA stats

Updated on: Jul 21, 2010, 02:21:48 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Despite tall pronouncements, the vote-catching Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has fallen short of its targets.

As many as 15 states including Gujarat, West Bengal and Kerala have performed poorly as compared to the national average of 48 days in executing the flagship programme.

In it’s Mid Term Appraisal (MTA) of the 11th Five Year Plan, the Planning Commission has found that only 14 per cent of worker households have completed 100 days of work mandated under the Act. Kerala, the most socially advanced state in India was able to provide work for only 22 days, thereby earning the dubious distinction of providing the least number of workdays in the country. However, 85 per cent of the people in the coastal state to get work were women.

The plan panel found that Gujarat was able to provide average 22 days of work per household whereas West Bengal provided 26 days same as Bihar. These three states also have the poorest record on MGNREGA fund utilization with Gujarat spending only 1 per cent.

The appraisal also takes note of the failure of majority of states in utilizing the programme for poverty alleviation especially in the poorest states.

The MTA observed that in U.P and Bihar BPL households are about 10 per cent higher than their share in employement, generated under the Act.

The commission has also expressed concern about the slow pace of work in tribal areas where Left-Wing Extremism is growing. “Steps need to be taken to ensure this work proceeds apace and the forest department provides fullest and most expeditious cooperation in this regard...” the MTA said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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