MGNREGA

SUBMITTED TO-Dr. DIPIKA UPADHYAY

SUBMITTEDT BY-ANAND PRATAP SINGHBBA LLB (second semester)

History of MGNREGA

• MNREGA was set up on Feb 2, 2006 from district Anantpura in the state of Andhra Pradesh

• In country like India, where human workforce is the major resource in development of economy,

mechanism to systematically utilize this force at grass root development has been overlooked for many years since independence. The enactment of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) in 2005 is indeed a significant development in -.

In this regard. In other words it symbolizes the achievement of a very long civil society and people’s movement towards ensuring right to food through ensuring right to work.

The Indian Parliament passed the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) in August 2005, which provides for a minimum of 100 days of guaranteed employment to every rural household. The Act came into force in 200 of the country’s poorest districts

and has later been expanded to another 130 districts. Presently, it has been extended to cover the whole country. MNREGA has placed a judicially enforceable obligation on the state to provide unskilled, manual

work within 15 days of a person making an application, within a radius of 5 km from the applicant’s residence. Failing this, the state government is to provide an unemployment allowance. Under the provisions of the act

workers are entitled to a statutory minimum wage for their labour, to be paid within seven days after the work is done. Men and women are to be paid equal wages. All these provisions make this a “People’s Act” in several sense.

1-The Act was prepared through a wide range of consultation with people’s organizations. The Act addresses itself chiefly to working people and their fundamental right to life with dignity.

The Act also empowers ordinary people to play an active role in the implementation of employment guarantee schemes through Gram Sabhas (participatory & representative micro level administrative unit in three tier Panchayat System),

social audits, participatory planning and other means. More than any other law, MNREGA is an Act of the people, by the people and for the people. This Act is an important step towards the realization of the right to work.

The popular job scheme of MGNREGA defines double goals of non-urban growth and career. The MGNREGA scheme states that performs must be focused towards a set of particular non-urban growth actions such as: water preservation and growing,

The primary objective of the Act is augmenting wage employment for the poorest of the poor while the secondary objective is to strengthen natural resource management through works that address causes of chronic poverty, like drought, and thus encourage sustainable development.

The law and the Constitution of India

• the Act aims to follow the Directive Principles of State Policy enunciated in Part IV of the Constitution of India. The law guarantees the 'right to work which is consistent with Article 41 that directs the State to secure to all citizens the right to work.

Further conforming to the Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that defines the right to work as a basic human right, this law guarantees the right to work to the people of India and hence is termed as a "People’s Act"

The statute also seeks to protect the environment through rural works which is consistent with Article 48A that directs the State to protect the environment.In accordance with the Article 21 of the Constitution of India that guarantees the right to life with dignity to every citizen of India

this act imparts dignity to the rural people through an assurance of livelihood security. The Fundamental Right enshrined in Article 16 of the Constitution of India guarantees equality of opportunity in matters of public employment and prevents the State from discriminating against anyone in matters of employment on

the grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, descent, place of birth, place of residence or any of them. The statute mandates that at least one-third of the beneficiaries shall be women (Section 4.6.9 of the NREGA Operational Guidelines)

Moreover women representation in the employment under the Act has been reported as 48 per cent from 2009–12, showing that the law has been used as an instrument to reduce gender inequality and foster women empowerment. Moreover the share ofScheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes has been around 30 per cent,

showing that the statute has empowered weaker sections ensuring social justice. In doing so, the legislation also follows Article 46 that requires the State to promote the interests of and work for the economic uplift of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and protect them from discrimination and exploitation

Article 40 mandates the State to organise village panchyat and endow them with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as units of self-government.. Also the process of decentralization initiated by 73rd Amendment to the Constitution of India that granted a constitutional status to the panchayat is further reinforced by the Mahatma Gandhi NREGA that endowed these rural self-government institutions with authority to implement the law

Benefit of MGNREGA

• From financial year 2006-07 up to fy2012-13 over Rs.1,29,000crore has been spent on wages .this is almost 70% of total expenditure .the scheme notified wages have increased across all states since 2006 .the average wage earned per beneficiary has risen from Rs.65 per person day in 2006 to Rs.150 2014

Importance of MGNREGAS

• The MGNREGA has given rise to the largest employment programme in human history and is unlike any other wage employment programme in its scale, architecture and thrust. Its bottom-up, peoplecentred, demand-driven, self-selecting, rights-based design is distinct and unprecedented

The MGNREGA provides a legal guarantee for wage employment

It is a demand-driven programme where provision of work is triggered by the demand for work by wage-seekers

There are legal provisions for allowances and compensation both in cases of failure to provide work on demand and delays in payment of wages for work undertaken

There are legal provisions for allowances and compensation both in cases of failure to provide work on demand and delays in payment of wages for work undertaken

Plans and decisions regarding the nature and choice of works to be undertaken, the order in which each work is to be triggered, site selection etc. are all to be made in open assembly of gram sbha and rectify by the GP.Unlike the earlier wage employment programmes that were allocation-based, MGNREGA is demand driven and resource transfer from Centre to States is based on demand of employment of each state This provide an additional incentive for state to leverage the act to meet the employment need of the poor

An Annual Report prepared by the Central Employment Guarantee Council (CEGC), on the outcomes of MGNREGA is required to be presented annually by the Central Government to Parliament. Likewise, the annual reports prepared by State Employment Guarantee Councils (SEGC) are to be presented to State Legislatures by the State Governments, facilitating oversight by elected representatives.

Social audit is a new feature that is an integral part of MGNREGA. Potentially, this creates unprecedented accountability of performance, especially towards immediate stakeholder

MGNREGA also marks a break from the relief programmes of the past towards an integrated natural resource management and livelihoods generation perspective

CRITISIZM

Despite its progress in improved implementation and governance, the NREGA still has to deal with the corruption and other improprieties that have come to be associated with any Govt. program in India. The CAG review said in as many as 70% of the villages checked

there were no proper records available on number of households who demanded jobs and the actual number of people who benefited from the job guarantee scheme. Hurdles to its implementation apart, the main criticism, however, is of the idea itself.

A focus on channeling the work to beneficial and durable infrastructure projects would create a great difference to the lives of the poor in the long term, rather than a focus on just distributing the money. Otherwise, it would just create a long term

dependency among the poor on the largesse of the Govt. If the works are only of marginal importance, and involve mainly the equivalent of digging and filling the ground, it would be such a huge waste of human potential and resources.

• And now the middleman between the Indian government and the worker ,most of the worker are not able to receive there actual remuneration which must receive by them

the name of dead persons are also there in the data of wage distribution ,the money belong to that dead person is one of the highest earning medium for the gram pradhan ,block officer etc .

As the main focus of the scheme is to provide local employment, it may be discouraging rural workers from going to better places where they can improve their skills. This could well delay the process of achieving economic transformation.

Mahatma Gandhi NREGA at a glance

• MGNREGA are enforced in total—778134 villages,in year 2013-2014

• Total expenditure of Indian government under this scheme in financial year 2013-2014 was 37547.1crores

Rural Development Ministry spends about 40,000crors rupees each year on the job guarantee scheme

% payment generated within 15 days58.5% in year 2013-201463% in year 2012-2013

4.5%payment generated within 15 days has decrease

• Total job card issued

• Fy2011-2012 2012-2013

12.39Crore 12.54Crore

In year 2006-07 the total number of job card issued only 3.78crore

and in year 2008-09 the total number of job card issued 10.1crore

• Total 25% of SCs people were working under this scheme in financial year 2006-2007

• Total 30% of SCs people were working under this scheme in financial year 2010-2011

• But the total number of SCs people who are working under MGNREGA decrease and in financial year 2012-2013 it was only 22%

And now about women in MGNREGA

% of women in total number of workers is increasing in year 2006-07 % of women was 40% and in year 2011-12 it was 48% and in year 2012-13 it increase again and currently the total number of women worker under this scheme is 53% i.e74.74crore

Total worker

• And now total number of worker under the MGNREGA

• FY2006-07 = 90.5crore

• FY2007-08 = 143.59crore

• FY2008-09 = 216.32crore

• FY2009-10 = 283.59crore

• FY2010-11 = 257.15crore

Total fund • 12073.55crore in FY 2006-2007

• 19305.81crore in FY 2007-2008

• 37397.06crore in FY 2008-2009

• 49579.19crore in FY 2009-2010

• 54172.14crore in FY 2010-2011

• 48832.49crore in FY 2011-2012

• 39620.16crore in FY 2012-2013

Expenditure ,%against available fund

• 2006-07 = 8823.35 73%

• 2007-08 = 15856.89 82%

• 2008-09 = 27250.10 73%

• 2009-10 = 37905.23 76%

• 2010-11 = 39377.27 73%

• 2011-12 = 38034.70 78 %

• 2012-13 = 25074.69 63%

The Central Government bears the costs on the following items:

The entire cost of wages of unskilled manual workers.

75% of the cost of material, wages of skilled andsemi-skilled workers.Administrative expenses as may be determined by

the Central Government, which will include,inter alia the salary and the allowances of the programme officer and his s supporting staff and work site facilities• Expenses of the Central Employment Guarantee Council.

The State Government bears the costs on the following items

25% of the cost of material, wages of skilled and semi-skilled workers

Unemployment allowance payable in case theState Government cannot provide wage employment on time

Administrative expenses of the State Employment Guarantee Council.

To ensure transparency in wage payments and prevent misappropriations, the Government of India mandated that all

MGNREGA wage payments should be made through banks/post office account opened in the name of the worker. As a result, nearly 8.6 crore bank/post office accounts (as per MIS data) of rural people have been opened under MGNREGA

And around 80 per cent of MGNREGA payments are made through this route. There are 4.08crore accounts in banks and 4.53crore in Post Offices(as per MIS data). The opening of accounts has brought the poor into the organised sector and in some cases provided them with better access to credit, an unprecedented financial inclusion initiative