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The new employment guarantee scheme provides an indispensable lifeline to the millions of poor in the rural areas of the country. This social security measure, for the first time makes the right to work a fundamental legal right - a new, radical deal for India’s poor.
The Parliament has approved the National Rural Employment Bill, 2005 seeking to provide 100 days assured employment every year to every rural household in 200 districts. This landmark legislation was passed by the Lok Sabha on August 23 and the Rajya Sabha on August 24, 2005. The Bill drafted after wide consultations fulfills a major promise of the UPA’s National Common Minimum Programme. The legislation has received wide support among political parties, social movements and the public at large.
Intervening in the debate on the Bill in the Rajya Sabha, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh argued for rationalizing subsidies, improving the investment climate and accelerating the pace of industrialization to maintain the economic growth of seven to eight per cent to fund schemes such as Rural Employment Guarantee. He described it as the "most important piece of legislation" in independent India. It marked a new beginning in the efforts for social equity and justice. He hoped that in the next four or five years it would cover all rural districts.
Dr. Singh said this legislation will give bargaining power to the poorest of the poor and help those belonging to the Scheduled Casts, Scheduled Tribes, landless class and women. We are offering a modest, gainful employment that will fetch Rs. 500 per month for a family. This will bring landless families in the social safety net," he said.
Replying to the debate, Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh assured the members that village panchayats would play a pivotal role in the implementation of the National Employment Guarantee Scheme and money would not be a constraint in accomplishing the commitments made by the UPA Government in this regard. Initially, the scheme would be implemented in 200 districts across the country, which would be extended to 600 districts. One third of the proposed jobs would be reserved for women.
The Centre has taken responsibility to providing financial assistance to the scheme and the States only had to implement it. The minimum wage as applicable in various States under the Minimum Wages Act 1948 would apply to the programmes. However, the Centre would step in to ensure a minimum rate of not less than Rs. 60 a day in States, where it was lower.
The minimum wages offered for manual work in states currently varies from Rs. 25 in Nagaland to Rs. 134 in Kerala.
The Bill also provides for unemployment allowance if the job, under the scheme, is not provided within a specified period. The minimum daily wage has been fixed at Rs. 60.
The UPA government has already made available about Rs. 10,000 crores for implementation of the scheme in the current financial year.
Background
Productive absorption of under employed and surplus labour force in the rural sector has been a major focus of planning for rural development. In order to provide direct supplementary wage employment to the rural poor through public works, many programmes were initiated by the Government of India, namely, National Rural Employment Programme (NREP), Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme (RLEGP) and Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY).
Currently, Sampoorna Gramin Rozgar Yojana (SGRY) is being implemented all over the country with the objective to provide supplementary wage employment in rural areas, create durable rural infrastructure and to ensure food security. Though the SGRY is providing some relief to the rural poor, its reach has been inadequate in view of the dimension of the unemployment in rural areas.
It has been indicated in the statement of objects and reasons annexed to the Bill that the scale of employment generation under SGRY in 2002-03 and 2003-04 was barely adequate to provide on an average 20 days of employment to each Below Poverty Line (BPL) household in the rural areas. Secondly, there is no guarantee that employment will be available to the rural households on demand as SGRY is an allocation based programme. The situation of unemployment has been compounded by the absence of any social security mechanism.
The legislation constitutes a pioneering endeavour to secure wage employment for the households in the rural areas as a guaranteed entitlement on this scale. It takes into account the experience of 30 years gained under the Employment Guarantee Scheme in Maharashtra. Considering that a programme of this kind is being contemplated on such a massive scale for the first time, it has to be necessarily implemented in phases so as to eventually cover all the rural areas of the country, subject to the economic capacity of the Central and State Governments.
Provisions
Some of the salient features of the legislation are:
The State Government shall, in such rural areas in the State and for such period as may be notified by the Central Government, provide to every household guaranteed wage employment in unskilled manual work at least for a period of one hundred days in a financial year in accordance with the provisions made in the legislation.
The one hundred days of employment under the legislation will be provided at the wage rate to be specified by the Central Government for the purpose of this legislation. Until such time a wage rate is specified by the Central Government for an area, the minimum wage rate fixed by the State Government under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948 for agricultural labourers shall be considered as the wage rate applicable to that area. If an eligible applicant is not provided work as per the provisions of this legislation within the prescribed time limit, it will be obligatory on the part of the State Government to pay unemployment allowance at the prescribed rate.
A Central Employment Guarantee Council at the Central level and State Employment Guarantee Councils at the State level in all States where the legislation is made applicable will be constituted for review, monitoring and effective implementation of the legislation in their respective areas. The Standing Committee of the District Panchayat, District Programme Coordinator, Programme Officers and Gram Panchayats have been assigned specific responsibilities in implementation of various provisions of the legislation at the Gram Panchayat, Block and District levels.
The Central Government shall establish a fund to be called ‘National Employment Guarantee Fund’ for the purposes of this legislation. Similarly, the State Governments may constitute State Employment Guarantee Funds. Provisions for transparency and accountability, audit, establishment of grievance and redressal mechanisms and penalty of non-compliance are also envisaged.
Analysis
The key to this legislation lies in the word ‘guarantee’. India abounds in schemes for the poor – all too often instruments for the State to display its munificence whenever political expediency demands it. A guarantee seeks to take this power away from the hands of the politicians and their pretenders. It makes it a right, something that people will expect and demand, something they can complain about, or in extremes, sue the government to get. It has the potential to profoundly alter the way bureaucrats treat the people they are supposed to serve.
The Employment Guarantee Scheme will be different from the many employment generation programmes. It is because they were implemented as programmes, subject to budgetary constraints and rules and regulations to suit implementing authorities. They were not statutorily assured and judicially enforceable rights/entitlements of free citizens of the country. With the present Bill, the state fulfils the right of the poor to a livelihood.
Conclusion
The implementation of an employment guarantee will require money, but it saves social and economic costs of poverty. Most official estimates place the annual expenditure at Rs. 40,000 crores to Rs. 50,000 crores for expansion to the whole country in five years.
In a democracy, the poor majority can justifiably demand a one per cent share of the GDP, of a country which has a six to seven per cent growth rate. With one of the lowest tax to GDP ratios in the world, the question of whether we can afford it is almost farcical.
There is a genuine fear of large scale corruption in such programmes. But we cannot forget that these arguments are most often citied as reasons for not implementing programmes for the poor.
The Bill would have to been seen against the background of the improved Right to Information Act, which would enable social audits and greater public scrutiny of the programmes. It will ensure greater accountability of panchayat bodies and the district administration as well. For example, muster rolls will no longer be secret, and budget and works will be public knowledge. All this will ensure that only those who really need work will be employed, and only those schemes required by the community are taken up.
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