Funds scam in NREGA ventures - Atasi Das

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was supposed to bring about a radical change in the lives of rural labourers. However, it has come under the scanner for massive misappropriation of funds.

The accountability clock is ticking rather fast for the Congress-led UPA government. After the CommonWealth Games scam, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 [commonly known as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA)], a government flagship programme for amelioration of rural poverty and promotion of inclusive growth, implemented by the Ministry of Rural Development, has come under the scanner for massive misappropriation of funds.

NREGA basics
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 guarantees ‘at least 100 days of wage employment in a financial year to every household, whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work’. The Act has come into force since February 2, 2006 and has since then been implemented in a phased manner. The primary objective of the Act is wage employment generation and its auxiliary objective is improved natural resource management, through schemes for eradication of drought, deforestation and soil erosion. The programme is jointly funded by the Centre and State governments, with the lion’s share of the burden being shared by the former.

Corruption charges
Jean Dreze, economist and member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council (the NREGA advisory review body) along with Mani Shankar Aiyar, former Union Panchayat Raj Minister has rued the absence of accountability in the UPA-government run NREGA scheme. Aiyar has raised queries on the non-payment of the legally stipulated allowances to the workers under the NREGA schemes and has also provided some alarming statistics on the same.

Under Section 7 of the NREGA, the workers are entitled to receive a stipulated allowance from the government, if they are not allotted a job within 15 days of its demand. All over India, the workers have received this allowance in only eight states; the compensation figures for the last four years are as follows: 1 in Kerala, 8 in Bengal, 51 in Tripura, 78 in Jharkhand, 543 in Orissa, 679 in Karnataka, 1,144 in Maharashtra and 1,574 in Madhya Pradesh, which is a rather small percentage, when compared to the fact that, an estimated 40 million people receive employment under the NREGA schemes per year.

In June 2009, the Deputy Commissioner of Khunti district of Jharkhand had falsely certified the absence of any wage disbursal delays in the district; a follow-up survey conducted by student volunteers in May 2010 brought out the fact that, wages were still due at three worksites at Tirla in Jharkhand - as the concerned records had gone missing, a flat compensation of Rs 3, 000 per worker, applicable under Section 30 of the NREGA was awarded to the 78 affected workers for around two to three years of delay in securing wages, for work done under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Schemes.

An August 2010, Rural Development Ministry report shows that less than 1 percent of West Bengal households had got the stipulated 100 days’ employment under the NREGA in 2009. Similar figures are available for states like Kerala, Punjab and Uttarakhand. Countrywide, workers have received very little compensation for wage payment delays, which they are entitled to under Section 30 (Schedule II) of the NREGA.

A scam worth over Rs 70 crore has been unearthed in Andhra Pradesh in August 2010, under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme – local government officials have been accused of forging work records for misappropriating money. The state NREGA authorities have suspended over 200 field officers and successfully recovered around Rs 13 crore of the stolen money. To check in corruption at the grass root level, the Andhra government has issued smart cards to the wage seekers and has anchored in the ‘global positioning systems’ for keeping a tab on the attendance of the field officers, at their allotted project sites.

A Rs 4.18 crore worth funds scam has also been unearthed at Gujarat’s Dahod taluka under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in August 2010. The 48 accused include sarpanches, sub-postmasters, taluka development officers and even an Additional Assistant Engineer; charges include non-payment of wages and manipulation of work muster rolls and job cards for misappropriating government money.

A July 2010 report of the Union Ministry of Rural Development has found the Gujarat government guilty of illegally siphoning off NREGA funds for its own departmental works-job cards issued to the rural households in the state had been held back by the sarpanches, employment registers were devoid of entries, planning and execution of work under the NREGA schemes was shoddy and the social audit mechanism for the project was also not satisfactory, in the state.

Rajasthan had been one of the first Indian states to go in for an independent social audit of the NREGA schemes (at Bhilwara), but the process was soon stalled with a court stay order, after large scale financial anomalies poured out in the investigations.

A block development officer (BDO) of Harirampur at South Dinajpur in West Bengal has been arrested on August 13, 2010 for misappropriating government development funds worth around Rs 1 crore, earmarked for the NREGA projects.

Conclusion
Empirical evidence suggests that in India the fruits of high economic growth have failed to percolate down to the bottom of the pyramid, particularly in the rural areas. The thrust on the government measures to promote inclusive growth through employment generation schemes is being seen a step towards rectifying this inequality. Unemployment and lack of economic development have also been identified as the genesis of insurgency in different parts of India in the recent past. In this backdrop, it remains to be seen as to how the government’s administrative and legal machinery successfully plucks out the seeds of corruption from government funded social sector programmes like the NREGA.