851 Words Short Essay on Rural Employment Guarantee

More than Sixty years after independence, India remains a country where 350 million people live in absolute poverty. India’s purr make up roughly one third of its total population since out of the total world population of 6 billion, India alone has a population of 1 billion. The large population has its pros and cons it provides for a large workforce.

However, it also adds to the country’s woe of myriad problems of food security, discrimination, and lack of education, health and sanitation facilities and unemployment that has a devastating impact on the economy. Lack of rural employment has been attributed to an imbalance in the social facets in rural areas.

Rural migration has increased tremendously. Migration to the urban areas in search of livelihoods and a better way of life also adversely affects the urban infrastructure, leading to overcrowding in the cities, housing problems and so on. It is clear that for India to make real gains in alleviating poverty a radical solution must be found.

Over the last decade-and-a-half, India has embraced the path of reforms. Since then there have been several dramatic changes in the economic landscape. The Government of India has made rural economic development in general and rural infrastructure development in particular, a key priority.

Since independence, the government has incorporated various schemes in all of its five-year plans. Most of the plans have focused on agriculture, industry,(especially heavy industry), defense, unemployment, poverty removal, development of village and cottage industries, natural mobilization of resources and improving the productivity level of industries by up gradation of technology.

However, the Eighth Five-Year Plan (1992-1997) has identified human development as the ultimate goal. It aimed to create jobs, contain population, eradicate literacy, universalize elementary education and provide safe drinking water and primary health care facilities to all.

Despite its progress, India has a long way to go with about one half of the population still illiterate, a high gender bias, relatively low life expectancy at birth (about 61 years), high levels of under-nutrition and anemia, lack of adequate safe drinking water and other basic amenities.

The Indian government has a number of schemes meant to alleviate poverty in rural areas but their success rate is very poor. A major reason for the low rate of employment generation is the decline in the employment elasticity of agricultural growth.

The late Rajeev Gandhi’s statement that only about 15 percent of money meant for the poor actually reaches them speaks volumes. To address the issue of unemployment various income generation schemes such as the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY), Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY), Swarnajayanti Gram Rozgar Yojana (SGRY) and others were formulated.

Creation of durable assets/infrastructure at the village level, creation of productive assets exclusively for SC/ST for sustained employment and generation of supplementary employment for the un-employed poor living below poverty linp were the objectives of these schemes.

But all of them failed to make a lasting impact because though the Indian Government had created lab our-intensive rural work programmers and these were not based on the Right to Work. Providing employment to the growing millions of unemployed has to clearly thus be the foremost national priority.

Recognizing the loopholes, the National /Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was drafted and formally launched in February 2006. It promises a job to every rural Indian in each household. NREGA has great potential for income security, poverty reduction and development of the backward rural areas, which will then help in addressing issues of migration, unemployment and food security.

This act has its own pros and cons. First, it aims at providing work, and not just a dole. Rural poor are guaranteed 100 days of work per household every year. Secondly, the work is to be used to improve local infrastructure and thus expected to improve productivity. Thirdly, there is universal targeting to remove bureaucratic discretion, a major source of corruption, delay and leakage.

All those who are registered in a village and offer themselves for work are eligible. Only manual work is offered at the state minimum wage or 75 percent of the national minimum wage, whichever is higher?

Fourthly, the legal right to work; transparency, with muster rolls of the eligible, of those given employment, of work done, to be posted in public places; the Right to Information Act (October 13, 2005), that makes it mandatory for officials to give information to citizens on request, are all expected to encourage citizen action to ensure delivery.

Fifthly, no contractors are to be used since they have been a major source of corruption and kickbacks in public works. Instead, the local panchayats are responsible for identifying the works and implementing the scheme. It is easier to make lower levels of government accountable to citizens.

But the main problem is that rural India’s infrastructure is crumbling, and the poor continue to suffer from chronic and especially seasonal unemployment. Re- vitalization of local self-government and effective delivery go together. Ensuring this and using funds to create good quality assets will be the major challenge. The scheme, if it works, can both create infrastructure and alleviate severe poverty.