NREGA is one of India’s most ambitious programmes to eradicate hunger. I have been involved with this since 2002 when a campaign started for the law. After its legislation I spent over one year in Tamil Nadu looking at its implementation. The following articles reflect this engagement. For a few useful links on NREGA, click here.
National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is primarily a programme aimed at creating public assets that would be useful for the society at large. When NREGA was created, it relaxed this principle by allowing projects in private lands of selected marginalised communities including SCs and STs. The Minister for Rural Development is now trying to [...]
The Minister for Rural Development, Mr C P Joshi has announced that he will revamp NREGA with some major changes, and the new scheme of things has been informally labelled “NREGA-2”. News reports have indicated that the new scheme will be unveiled on the birthday of Rajiv Gandhi. As of now the Ministry has not made available for public discussion the set of changes that will be made, but some ideas have been making their way to the media periodically. This article synthesizes these ideas, and provides links to articles debating the so-called NREGA-2.
NREGA has been relatively successful in many states in creating a large volume of employment, but critics have pointed out that the quality of projects is often poor. I agree with this assessment and argue that employment tends to be provided since there is a pressure for creating work and paying wages on a timely basis. But there is little pressure for quality from any source, be it administration, social movements or people at large. Unless we get some pressure group for ensuring quality, it is likely that quality of work in NREGA will continue to be poor in the years to come.
The United States is littered with projects created by wage-employment programmes, especially of the new deal era. Parks, forests, soil conservation and all kinds of other works were taken up under the new deal, especially through the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). I wrote this article after a visit to the Adirondacks forest area in New York, which reassured me that wage employment programmes like NREGA can make substantial contribution to our society if we decide to make good use of it.
NREGA presents an unprecedented opportunity for disabled persons across India to earn a living and to showcase their talents. But as things stand, NREGA is not designed for disabled people to participate in it, but we can change it all with some tweaking.
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