Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'MGNREGS is not a bad scheme' that was published in Newsband

MGNREGS is not a bad scheme

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme was launched a decade back. The programme has been largely successful in living up to what it set out to do: provide employment to India’s rural poor and improve their livelihoods. MGNREGS has served as a source of employment for the poor in distress situations such as drought, crop failures and lean rural employment days. It has helped raise rural wages steadily over time, and built rural assets such as irrigation canals and roads which have augmented local infrastructure.

Yes, there have been ups and downs in the Central outlay for the scheme. Even so, the implementation of the scheme has continued to be better in some States as opposed to even drought-hit States.

Hour of the need for our country is welfare beyond politics. Perfect implementation of MGNREGS is necessary. It will be helpful in eradicating poverty, unemployment and most important migration of the poor from villages to ever growing metros. In a broad sense, it is also against the caste system as all caste members are working together for a common cause and a sense of community is there.

MGNREGS should also focus on creating common properties, i.e. garden, ponds, playground for children of villages, fisheries and even they can donate labour for any meaningful work for the welfare of community. Wages for MGNREGS workers should be near about Group 'D' employees of Central Government.

But there are some critics who say that MGNREGS is able to only partially fulfil the actual need - lifting the very poor out of the poverty trap and that it has been one of the schemes which have been well intentioned but the real beneficiaries are the corrupt & not the poor.

But a lot has changed in MGNREGS over the years. There are variety of works that can be taken up under MGNREGS like building a poultry shed or compost pit for vermiculture. Many of the technical hurdles, like excess use of material, are crossed over through convergence with other schemes. It is just implementation that is the problem not the scheme. We still need to infuse confidence and understanding among the stakeholders, mainly villagers, about the scheme and its provisions like unemployment allowance.

MGNREGS was one of the instrument through which we were able to face the financial turmoil in the world economy in 2008-2009. It gave rural masses enough purchasing power that kept the demand from slowing down. Overall it is a beautiful and well-intended programme that is only going to benefit our society.

No doubt MGNREGS has been helping the rural people in distress with alternative source of income. But the level of all agricultural and environment miseries still persists. This Program could have been a great success with effective ground level monitoring system, which access the work in terms of productivity.

Yes, one has to accept that it is a good scheme; but its original design is to give job when there is no work available especially when the agriculture season comes to an end. However, in most places it goes at full swing during the agriculture season and this is one major reason for agriculture becoming a difficult profession. If it is implemented in the original spirit with which it was designed, then it will be good.