Defeat Moves to scuttle Rural Employment Guarantee Act!

Fight For Its Expansion To Urban Areas!

The National Employment Guarantee Act was a commitment made in the Common Minimum Programme of the UPA I government, which was dependent upon the support of the Left parties for its survival. This has roused huge expectations among the youth in our country who were feeling frustrated at the ‘jobless growth’, a feature of the neoliberal regime.

But when it came to fulfilling this commitment, the Congress led government showed lot of dilly dallying. Questions were raised about where the money will come from. It took a lot of pressure from the Left parties who were supporting the government and the progressive workers’, peasants’ and agricultural workers’ movements in the country to introduce the Bill. What was introduced was a highly watered down version of that drafted by the National Advisory Council. It had totally excluded urban areas and households. Thus, the poor peasants and agricultural workers, who are compelled to migrate from rural areas due to lack of work find themselves excluded from this Act. Besides, it does not provide for payment of statutory minimum wages prevalent in the respective states. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act which came into force in February 2006 was renamed Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in 2009

The MGNREG Act mandates that 100 days of wage employment should be provided, in a financial year, to adult members of every rural household, who are willing to do unskilled manual work. It also provides for unemployment allowance if work could not be provided for a job card holder within 15 days of application and for payment of 10% of transport charges if work is given at a place beyond a distance of 5 km. It also stipulates that a compensation of 0.05% of the pending amount per day should be paid if the payment for work done is delayed beyond 15 days.

But none of these provisions are implemented properly in practice. The stipulation to provide at least 100 days of work in a financial year has never been achieved. It was only under the Left Front government in Tripura that more than 90 days’ work was provided under MGNREGS. The average national average was 54 days in 2009 -10 which came down to 47 days in 2010-11 and 2011-12.

Despite such shortcomings, the MGNREGA provided some succour to the rural poor who sought manual work. Today it covers the entire rural areas in the country. The serious situation in the rural areas, of lack of work and the demand for even such low paid work become evident from the number of people who seek work under MGNREGS, which has been continuously rising every year. This is more so in the case of women. According the website of the scheme, 12.74 job cards have been issued till now, of which 7.28 crore job cards were active. Women comprise over 55% of those who seek MGNREGA work. This shows the extent of lack of work for women and their readiness to do hard manual work for low wages. In the prevailing conditions of rural distress, MGNREGA provided some relief to the agricultural workers and rural poor.

BJP government’s attempts to scuttle the programme

But, the BJP government led by Modi is trying to scuttle the scheme and deprive the rural poor of even this little relief. From the beginning, this government has been inimical to the scheme. Within two months of coming to power, the BJP government issued a circular directing the state governments to limit implementation of the programme to only 2454 out of the 6860 blocks across the country. Manik Sarkar, the then chief minister of Tripura, and a Politburo member of CPI (M) sat on dharna at Jantar Mantar in the national capital demanding reversal of the circular. This along with widespread criticism of the circular and agitations across the country compelled the BJP government to retreat. Prime Minister Modi has also described the MGNREGS as a ‘living monument’ of the failure of the previous governments in tackling poverty.

Release of funds to the state governments, except a few, has come down under the Modi led BJP government. The BJP government has also used curtailment of funds to MGNREGS as political vendetta against the Left Front government of Tripura, which had the best record of its implementation. Allocations to Tripura in 2016-17 were cut down by around 25% compared to that in 2015-16. As a result, the average number of days of work provided in the state came down from 94.5 days in a year in 2015-16 to 79.9 days in 2016-17. The total number of work days, provided under the scheme in the country, declined by 77.57 lakh labour days.

Non payment for work done has increased alarmingly under BJP rule. Today, in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Tripura, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana – in almost all states across the country, the major complaint of the rural poor who work under the MGNREGA is of non payment of wages for work that they have done months back. In 2016-17, arrears on account of unpaid wages for the work done under the scheme amounted to Rs 20000 crore. The government has thousands of crores of rupees to spend on advertisements with pictures of Prime Minister Modi displayed all over the country. The Prime Minister claims of showering benefits over rural people and empowering women. But they do not think it necessary to pay wages on time for the work done by the rural poor. Isn’t it a shame? What should be the priority that is really concerned about the poor? Paying them wages for the work that they have done or spending on advertisements?  Can hypocrisy go any further? It is also to be noted that more than half of MGNREGA workers are women. Is this the type of women’s empowerment that the BJP government under Modi takes pride about?

The MGNREGA is meant to provide work whenever there is demand. The government of India is supposed to have funds allocated and ready to be paid to the workers whenever work is provided to them, particularly in situations like drought etc, to alleviate rural distress. But there has been a severe shortage of fund allocations since the BJP government came to power. The government should have allotted Rs 79898 crores this year, including the amount for the pending liabilities of last year. Instead, it has allotted only Rs 48000 crores. As the state governments do not have the funds, they deny work.

Not only that. The government is also deleting lakhs of job cards across the country. According to the Act, a job card can only be deleted only if it is found to be a duplicate, if it is found that the entire household has permanently migrated to another place or the job card holder has died. But the Modi government has reportedly deleted one crore job cards on the pretext that they were fake. More outrageous is the manner in which the government claimed this depravation of even such low paid work to the poor as ‘saving’. 

Another ploy to weaken MGNREGA is linking with Aadhar. The Supreme Court has clearly ruled that linkage with Aadhar should not be made mandatory. Despite this, the BJP government continues to insist that every MGNREGA worker should be registered under Aadhar and that those who do not possess Aadhar would be denied work. This would deprive large sections of rural people work under MGNREGA.

In 28 of the 36 states and union territories in the country wages paid for MGNREGA work are far below the minimum wages.  The finance ministry refuses to bring the wages on par with the minimum wages of the state. It has been rejecting the recommendation of the Ministry of Rural Development that MGNREGA wages be linked to Consumer Price Index (CPI) for rural workers instead of the CPI for agricultural labourers.

In fact, despite the assurances that the scheme would be continued, the BJP government is trying all possible means to curtail and ultimately abandon the scheme, which provides some relief to the rural poor. With pending wages and non allotment of work on demand, workers lose interest and do not seek work under the Act. However, in the states where the MGNREGA workers are organised and fight for their dues, they are able to get their pending wages. But, where they are not organised, they lose heart and stop asking for work. They feel it is better to not work and starve than work and starve. The BJP led government is probably waiting for such an excuse, of a decline in demand, to wind up the scheme.

With continuing agrarian crisis and rural distress, migration to towns and cities in search of work has been increasing. Many of these migrant workers are subjected to severe exploitation by the contractors, middlemen and the employers. Many of them are compelled under conditions of bonded labour. They do not have any protection or support. CITU has, since long, been demanding enactment of an Urban Employment Guarantee Act similar to the MGNREGA. It has been demanding that the number of workdays guaranteed should be increased to 200 in a year and that the minimum wages of the state should be made applicable for all these workers.

2018

Published by Centre of Indian Trade Unions