The Districts and Intermediate Panchayats
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India’s Mahatma Gandi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
estimate the demand for labour in the coming year, based on the number of residents and their demands, taking into account crop patterns and other local conditions.
Box 7 Implementation in a village in Amravati District of Maharashtra
and in Adilabad District of Andhra Pradesh
In a village in the Uthnur block in Adilabad District of Andhra Pradesh, the workers find regular employment upon demand. At the work site the MGNREGS field assistant takes attendance using both the print Muster Roll
and an application on his mobile phone, which will make the data available online within a few minutes. For the villagers a major change compared to earlier schemes is that they can easily talk to the young field assistant,
who sees them in the village regularly. MGNREGS is unlike other schemes, because it comes right to their doorstep, no one has to go to offices and wait. Also, the Scheme allows them to develop their own lands. What
had been fallow lands are now fields. The field assistant too knows that he has the support of an extensive network MGNREGS workers in the District.
In the Bhatkuli Block of Amravati District in Maharashtra MGNREGS workers are constructing canals next to a road in the glistening sun, there is no shade. When they break for lunch, they talk about how they have not
been paid for the last two months, and nor have measurements of their work been taken. The workers desperately wait for their wages and need to borrow money to make ends meet. Several families have already
decided not to work in the NREGS anymore and fall back on migration as a coping strategy. Here, works
– except the road work – have primarily been carried out on the land of bigger farmers, with more space for farm ponds. But the potential extra crop will not bring additional work for agricultural labourers, as the farmers
have shifted from the cotton to soy, and the latter does not need to be harvested manually.
Source: Author ’s field work in 2012.
When the GP level structures do not fulfil their statutory tasks within the MGNREGS framework, they can become major obstacles for citizens to realise their entitlement to
employment. For example, the poor maintenance of records alone leads to a situation in which “the authenticity of the figures of employment demanded, employment provided,
number of days of employment generated, entitlement to unemployment allowance etc. could not be verified” CAG, 2013: 10. The failure to involve beneficiaries hampers the
rights-based and beneficiary centred planning CAG, 2013: 15f. Out of a random sample of 3848 GPs, 1201 GPs, or 31 per cent of the sample, did not prepare annual plans CAG,
2013: 16. A lack of appropriate inputs from lower levels also causes problems for the demand based financing of the scheme, as outlined below.
To the defence of the GPs it may be pointed out that “many States have failed to
provide adequate support to PRIs such as dedicated personnel and other necessary infrastructure which is essential for efficient planning and implementation of works under
the scheme” SCRD, 2013: 85. However, next to problems of capacities and coordination, there are cases of “wilful denial of entitlements by the officials” NCEUS, 2009: 225 and
“outright sabotage of the scheme by the administration” Ambasta et al., 2008: 44. There is evidence of
“local elite capture and targeting failures” Raabe et al., 2012: 318. Both the lack of capacities and the wilful denial ultimately limit the capacity of the scheme to
make work available on demand and meet the statutory requirements.