Nitish pilots change in NREGA fund plan

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has done what his counterparts in other states failed to do.

Updated on: Feb 7, 2011, 24:21:55 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has done what his counterparts in other states failed to do.

He convinced the Centre that its policy on disbursement of funds for implementing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) was flawed and needed correction.

At a meeting with Plan Panel deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Kumar pointed out the anomaly, which the government acknowledged and was quick to react.

This resulted in higher fund allocation, not only for Bihar, but, for entire country to implement the world's largest employment programme.

Rural development secretary BK Sinha on Thursday issued an order directing his ministry to release money to the states for implementing the scheme as per demand projected in the labour budget. Labour budget is the month-wise demand for work projected by the states to the ministry.

The rural development ministry used to release funds to the states on the basis of expenditure in previous months and not as per projections in the labour budget. It meant that for high work demand months, such as January and February, the money released was as per expenditure in low demand month of December.

This resulted in the states feeling financial crunch to provide work to all. "This anomaly has been corrected," said a Plan panel functionary.

Kumar had told Ahluwalia on Wednesday the state was not able to provide work as per demand because not enough money was being released.

The panel apprised rural development minister Vilasrao Deshmukh about it, who then directed the secretary to act. "Releases for the remaining months of the current financial year will be made on the basis of demand projected in the labour budget," Sinha said.

Also, there would be no other formality in fund releasing except seeking utilisation certificate in the previous months.

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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