Revamping MGNREGS only way to save it
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in a mischievous jibe at the Congress, said recently that his Government would retain the party's flagship programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, as a living monument of the UPA regime's failure. But it is not in the Prime Minister's DNA to keep alive projects that are failures, for whatever reasons. Therefore, his Government has been taking a series of measures to tweak and even revamp the MGNREGS to bring it on track and align it with his vision of productive development. The scheme had degenerated into a sort of entitlement programme for the rural community, where the rural poor were guaranteed a minimum 100 days of work (and therefore, wages) every year for being engaged in all sorts of activities that supposedly benefitted the region.
In reality and in most places across the country, this meant digging up trenches for no purpose whatsoever and then filling them up. This qualified for ‘rural employment'. Hardly any lasting asset got created since the scheme was launched with much fanfare nine years ago. To make matters worse, there were reports of widespread misappropriation of money that was to go to those who were employed through the scheme. The lack of transparency and accountability took a heavy toll on the MGNREGS, and even those who backed the project cried foul. Mr Modi's Government has set about changing the situation on the ground. Through its latest initiative, it has identified productive activities worth some Rs26,000 crore that can be executed through the scheme.
The Government wants these works to not only provide employment to the rural poor but also contribute to the creation of lasting facilities in the region. This is as it should be — and wasn’t. Now, nearly two lakh kilometres of roads will be constructed as part of the MGNREGS; these will be stretches that do not come within the purview the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana. Over six lakh individual toilets under the Swachch Bharat Abhiyan too will be built through this rural employment guarantee scheme. Nobody can deny that all of these projects will be enormously useful.
Great deals of money have been dedicated to the MGNREGS over the last close to a decade, with proportionately little to show for the effort. The project kicked off within an initial outlay of a whopping Rs40,000 crore — an amount which the UPA regime whittled down somewhat in the coming years. The challenge before the Modi Government is to make the UPA's flagship project an all-round success. The Government can do it if it fixes the three problems that have plagued the project: Poor implementation, tardy supervision and absence of accountability. There may arise no reason for the MGNREGS to be written off. As for the Congress crowing about the scheme, let it remember that a scheme is only as good as its implementation.
