Govt may downsize MGNREGA to boost scheme impact on the poor

For fiscal prudence and better outcome of public expenditure, the Narendra Modi government is likely to downsize some of the social sector schemes, including the rural job guarantee programme, the biggest grosser of the central funds.

Updated on: Oct 31, 2014, 24:37:53 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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For fiscal prudence and better outcome of public expenditure, the Narendra Modi government is likely to downsize some of the social sector schemes, including the rural job guarantee programme, the biggest grosser of the central funds.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley had allocated about Rs 33,351 crore for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) in his budget this July but many believe that the huge expenditure was not resulting in the desired outcome because of its expansive spread.

The MGNREGA covers entire rural India spread over 6,600 blocks irrespective of whether there was demand for work or not. The government wants to change this and is looking at focusing on implementing the job guarantee scheme in about 2,500 blocks, where India’s poorest live.

“It is one of the proposals being discussed for the next Union budget as a measure to improve impact of public expenditure,” a senior government official told HT, adding that it would be discussed with the rural development ministry officials soon.

This was also an idea pushed by the Planning Commission when MGNREGA was conceived. The scheme was initially implemented in the 200 poorest districts in 2006 but within the next few years it was expanded to entire rural India.

The panel’s call to make it more outcome-oriented failed to cut ice with the UPA government even though the work provided to a household in a year reduced from about 70 days to 31.6 days in 2014-15. The law provided for maximum of 100 days of work for a household at a rate prescribed by the Centre, which was not met even in the
poorest of the districts.

Sources say PM Modi is keen to ensure that MGNREGA turns into a poverty alleviation scheme by creating assets that can improve agriculture productivity rather than only being a social security mechanism.

“Data has shown that the scheme is not of much use in the rich states of Punjab or Haryana. But, it can do wonders in poorer states such as Jharkhand or Odisha if its implementation is improved,” an official said. For that, the government wants to adopt more micro block-level approach instead of the present district-level implementation.

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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