Job plan returns to Dalits, tribal farmers

The government has amended its guidelines under the national rural employment guarantee scheme (NREGS), the world’s largest job security scheme, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Sep 15, 2009, 23:37:20 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government has amended its guidelines under the national rural employment guarantee scheme (NREGS), the world’s largest job security scheme.

The guidelines, issued in July, allowed asset creation on private land owned by small and marginal farmers. In the UPA’s first innings, it was allowed only on government land.

Job Numbers

* Nregs guarantees a
maximum of 100 days of work in a year.

* The Planning Commission had blamed poor administration of the scheme at the panchayat level for states’ inability to provide 100 days of work.

* On an average, the state governments have provided 40-50 days of work.

* The Centre had provided close to Rs 70,000 crore till March 31, 2009 for NREGS implementation.

* In the 2009-10 budget, Rs 39,100 crore has been
earmarked for the scheme.

On September 1, the Rural Development Ministry said projects built on land owned by Dalit and tribal groups will be accorded first priority for asset creation.

The guidelines on July 22 had allowed NREGS projects on land owned by small (up to one hectare) and marginal farmers (up to two hectares), without specifying the target groups.

The guidelines, which allowed asset creation — ponds, wells and check dams — in private land owned by small and marginal farmers, were criticised by civil rights groups, which contended that Dalits and tribals, the primary targets of the scheme, would get a raw deal.

“Close to 80 per cent farmers in India are marginal and small. The guidelines would have meant that the rich and powerful among these took away all benefits,” said rights activist Nikhil De.

There are close to 160 million Dalits in India. The tribal population in the country is estimated at about 240 million people.

Since February 2006, Rs 70,000 crore (Rs 700 billion) has been spent on the NREGS to benefit 43.2 million people. The popularity of the scheme was one of the factors that helped the UPA romp back to power in May 2009.

The government reasoned that asset creation would help improve the output of small farmers, who have turned into agricultural labourers owing to falling earnings from their land.

“Once work on the land of Dalits and tribal owners is complete, NREGS funds can be utilised for creation of assets on land of small farmers,” said Mihir Shah, member in-charge of rural development in the Planning Commission.

The ministry got some support from Madhusudan Mistry, former chief whip of Congress in 14th Lok Sabha, who said the July guidelines would have ensured people got the minimum 100 days of employment.

But finally, the civil rights groups, led by Aruna Roy, have succeeded in persuading the government.

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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