Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'MGNREGS is good for farmers' that was published in Newsband

MGNREGS is good for farmers

When the threat of a deficient monsoon looms, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) could act as a real salvation for distressed farm workers and labourers. MGNREGS has acted as an effective substitute in the absence of crop and weather insurance to poor farm households in some States lately. The World Bank says that the MGNREGS can be a better-targeted scheme than even a cash transfer programme.

The MGNREGS is a demand-driven scheme, but the fact that it requires adequate conditions for its effective implementation is self-evident. That the MGNREGS has provided succour to India’s poorest sections in rural areas is something that has been acknowledged and acclaimed. One cannot deny the fact that the benefits of the scheme outweigh the drawbacks.

It is good that we have MGNREGS and with present Governments mindset, hope it will be continued in the times to come but definitely the Farmers community has been under trauma of unseasonal rains leading to massive losses to the farmers. The Nation needs to work on few suggestions - why not work on the projects for river canal system and work out on canal net work creation as well as reviving the sources for water harvesting system. We are fond of boasting that the nation is having good number of working hands but the nation needs to explore on this. Secondly, we need to create entrepreneurs also and for that the nation must provide options research and development and the country needs to encourage various universities to work on research and development for which nation needs to monitor this segment that will not only improve on industry but also add up to industrial production.

Jobs carried out with muscle power are as dignified as those done with sophisticated machineries. Those jobs are environmentally clean and are rewarding from the health point of view, though financially unrewarding.

MGNREGS is a good scheme but it needs more transparency with corruptionless environment. It needs more dedication to implement it. MGNREGS is the only guarantee of rozgar in India for poor people and NDA has a good chance to implement it in a very effective manner.

MGNREGS used to be corruption hotbed, but with social audit the situations appear to have changed dramatically! More villagers know of their right, less thugs (including sarpanch's) can exploit them.

MGNREGS is hated by rich farmers and middlemen because they can no longer exploit the village work force.

But the question many people ask is “If MGNREGS is really helping the farmers as well as labourers then why labourers are still migrating to cities for livelihood and farmers are committing suicides?" The ideology behind this scheme is ok but it only give fruits when it is implemented correctly and if the work done by the labourer under this scheme is benefitting farmers to make a good yield and does not lead them to stop cultivating lands.