CASE SUGGESTION SCHEME

Abstract:
This is a case study of an important innovation in providing healthcare for the rural poor: the Yeshasvini Health Insurance Scheme for rural farmers and peasants in Karnataka, India. Arguably the world's largest health insurance scheme for the rural poor, the scheme commenced in 2003. Designed in ways that overcome several obstacles to providing health security for rural populations, the scheme covered, in its second year, about 2.2 million widely dispersed peasant farmers for surgical and out patient care for a low annual premium of approximately US$ 2. In this paper, we describe and evaluate the scheme in its first year of operation, and explore its potential to be a model for the developing world generally.
Accepted
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India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGA) -
Localised Implementation in Gulbarga District of Karnataka.
PC Jaffer IAS1
Introduction
Following the Enactment of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act
(NREGA) 2005, the ambitious National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
(NREGS) has been implemented in selected 200 districts of the country. This was
later extended to 130 more districts during the year 2007-08. The main objective
of the scheme is ‘to provide for the enhancement of livelihood security of the
households in rural areas of the country by providing at least one hundred days of
guaranteed wage employment in every financial year to every household whose
adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work’. Unlike the hitherto
prominent poverty alleviation and rural development schemes, this Act ensures
the right to work as a statutory right guaranteed and protected by law. The
passing of the Act in 2005 signifies a paradigm shift in the strategies of the rural
development.
This present paper examines the implementation issues and the immediate
impact of the scheme on rural population. Gulbarga district of Karnataka state is
taken as a case study. The implementation issues are important because this
scheme represents a deviation from all the previous ones in many ways. The
present study examines the impact of NREGS on poverty alleviation, creation of
durable community assets, agricultural wage level, distress migration and women
empowerment.
This scheme is different from all other such schemes that have been implemented
in the country so far. A few non-negotiable features of this scheme gives a hope
that this could be implemented plugging the loopholes for leakage of government
money. This is a demand based programme where there is no limitation of the
funds for the implementation. Any individual from the rural household can
register under this scheme irrespective of the economic status of the family.
Participatory planning and decentralised implementation are the specialities of the
scheme. It is mandatory to implement at least 50 per cent of the works by the
Grama Panchayat (the units of local self government at the village).
1The author is a member of the Indian Administrative Services and presently posted as Chief
Executive Officer of the Zilla Pacnhayat, Gulbarga in the State of Karnataka, India. This piece is
written primarily based on his experiences while working as District Programme Coordinator of NREGS
and the review of the data available in his office. The analyses follow the extensive filed visits and
interview with various stakeholders. The opinions expressed in this article are of the author need not
reflect that of the organization and the government he represents.
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There are certain inbuilt safeguards in the scheme to ensure that the money is
spent on labour oriented works and it reaches the targeted beneficiaries. Firstly,
the contractors are banned in the implementation of the programme. Secondly, it
is mandatory to spend at least 60 per cent of the funds for the payment to the
labourers. Thirdly, Priority must be given to labour intensive projects like
watershed development, social forestry, wasteland reclamation etc. Finally,
payment of wages to the workers is to be made through accounts opened in the
name of labourers so as to prevent the exploitation of middlemen and to cultivate
saving habit in people.
Implementation Of the programme
Being a demand driven scheme, the basic idea is that the labourers who are
willing to do manual work are to be registered with the registration officer.
Whenever, they require work, they should approach the authorities and formally
place a requisition for work. The registration officer in the state is Secretary of
the Grama Panchayat (GP). The GP will issue a job-card to each family which will
entitle them to demand work as per their convenience. The job-cards are issued
within 15 days of registration. Any labourer with a job card can ask for work and
it should be provided to them within 15 days failing in which they are eligible for
getting unemployment allowance. The labourers have to be paid as per the
prevailing rate of minimum wages in the state. The minimum wages in the state
is Rs 74 per day. The families registered under the scheme amount to more than
30 million in all over the country. The corresponding figure for the district is
200688 families out of a total of 388394 families in the rural areas of the district.
Participatory and decentralised Planning for the Scheme
As a beginning, the task of identification of the potential of the village with the
developmental requirement and the resources available were carried out. This
was done as collective effort of various stakeholders and the community. A
meeting of all the villages were carried out for this purpose. The villagers
identified the requirements of the village and prioritised these demands. They
were helped by one NGO in these tasks. Their responsibility was to ensure
community participation in the planning process. Along side, various line
departments also identified the works related to their departments. All these
suggestions were combined and the perspective plan for the five years was
formed. The works were prioritised and those that are expected to be carried out
for an year were taken out separately. Detailed estimates were prepared for these
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works. This is known as the shelf of projects. These plans were approved by the
elected body before implementing.
Administrative mechanism
For the purpose of implementation of the scheme, the Gram Panchayats2 are
designated as the primary implementing agencies. The Executive Officer of the
Taluka Panchayat (Intermediary Panchayat) is designated as the Programme
Officer (PO) for NREGS. The Chief Executive Officer of the Zilla Panchayat is
designated as the District Programme Coordinator. There are five implementing
agencies in the district. Department of Watershed Development and Social
Forestry are the implementing agencies in the district other than the three tiers of
the Panchayat Raj system. Technical support for the implementation is provided
by the Panchayat Raj Engineering Division which has one Junior Engineer for a
cluster of three to four Grama Panchayats.
Fund-flow
The fund for NREGS is allocated at the ratio of 90:10 by centre and state
respectively unlike other programmes where the ratio is 75:25. The Central
government releases the money to the districts directly who in turn releases it to
the sub-district level to be used for various works. The payment for the labourers
under all works is made by the Grama Panchayat irrespective of the implementing
agencies.
Payment and Bank accounts
It is mandatory to make payment under NREGS only through accounts. This is
followed very strictly in the district. This is very much helpful in ensuring that the
payment is reaching the real beneficiaries as no middle men come into the
picture. However, such a step does not come without its own share of problems.
The major issue was to find out banking institutions at the door steps of the
workers. Penetration of banking institutions and the banking habits are not
encouraging in the rural areas. Thus, a major share of the accounts was opened
by the Post offices. Once the scheme was six months old, post offices turned out
to be the biggest bottleneck for the implementation of the programme in many
places as they were not able to cope up with the manifold increase in their work.
The increased in workload without any capacity addition resulted in delay in
making the payments to the labourers. Finally, most of the accounts were shifted
2 Grama Pacnhayat is the lowest of the three tiers of the local self government at the
village level. The ZillaPanchayat is the highest level.
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to the banks who agreed to cope up with the extra workload by working more
every day. The first impressions from the field are that the people have accepted
this system of payment as there is no scope for middle men in the scheme of
things. This is slowly inculcating a habit of savings in the minds of the rural
population which was hitherto unheard of. All the accounts opened were joint
accounts in the names of the women of the household also. This is one step
towards the gender sensitivity and women empowerment.
NREGA and Gender
NREGA is a highly gender sensitive scheme. It is mandatory that at least one
third of the workers should be women. The share of women at the national level
is 40%. The share of person-days worked by the women in Gulbarga district is
49% which is a little more than their share in the population. It is again
necessary to provide various facilities at the worksite like drinking water and baby
sitters. The provision of baby sitters will free the women of all the worries of
tacking care of their little kids. This provision is women friendly in another way
that this will spare the elder siblings from rearing the younger ones. Thus the
scheme promotes the education of girl child also. Women are more attracted
towards the scheme because the wage level for women labourers are less than
that of the male counterparts in the market. While a male labourer gets Rs 100
per day on an average during harvest seasons and Rs 70-80 during the lean
season, a women labourer gets about Rs 50 during harvest season and Rs 30-40
during lean season.
It is undisputed that the scheme has the potential to mobilise women in large
numbers and groups (which was earlier difficult). This presents an opportunity to
the Government to form productive self help groups among them and provide job
training. Thus, the ideal progression from the unskilled labour to the skilled
labour through the convergence of the entire scheme should materialise as an
offshoot of the NREGA. This is true in the case of the men also. Such social
change and upward mobility is the final aim of any poverty alleviation schemes.
Experiences from the field
The programme is being implemented for the last one year and the figures by the
end of March show that all the families and individuals who demanded work have
been provided with the work. NREGA has so far employed 148,735 people from
77,594 households in the district. This has generated 28,77,000 person-days by
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taking up 3537 works. The expenditure made for the payment of the labourers is
62.01%.
The scheme has a positive impact on the household income level. This is mainly
because of three reasons. Firstly, NREGS provide 100 days of guaranteed job to
each household who are in need of manual unskilled work in rural areas.
Considering with the daily wage of Rs. 69 paid under the scheme, each family is
ensured about additional Rs 6900/ per year. Secondly, women labourers have
taken advantage of the scheme thereby increasing the family income as they are
paid lesser wages elsewhere. Thirdly, NREGS has ensured continued job to rural
household during the lean season.
The impact of the scheme on consumption, health expenditure and saving habit is
visible. A majority of the beneficiaries reported increase in their consumption,
health expenditure and saving. Under the scheme so far more than 0.65 million
accounts have been opened in the district. More than one lakh accounts are
opened in the name of the beneficiaries in the post offices. This had started to
have some impact on inculcating banking and saving habits among the people
who were hitherto untouched by such habits. Some of the beneficiaries reported
that about 50per cent of the income earned under the scheme is either saved at
home or at banks. On the other hand, it has to be noted that most of the
households still withdraw the whole amount from the bank accounts immediately
after the amount is credited.
Although it is too early to surface the impact of the scheme on agricultural wages,
the filed surveys show that on an average wage rates have started increasing in
the district. This has resulted in shortages of labourers for other types of works.
Simple theory of demand and supply states whenever there is shortage of supply
of labourers demand being constant, agricultural wages are bound to increase.
This has been very well evidenced through the interviews with beneficiaries,
farmers, engineers and contractors. The uptrend in wage level will increase cost
of cultivation. The non availability of labourers will negatively affect the
agricultural productions. It may ultimately lead to change in the cropping
patterns. Preference will be given to those commercial crops which require
manual labourers in lesser number.
Another social implication of this trend will be rift and antagonism between
labourers and farmers and the possibility of emerging class conflict among the
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landlords and labourers. Another objective of the scheme is to analyse the impact
of NREGS on the migration of rural people. People from the district migrate to
other cities like Bombay, Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad in search of job. The
status of migration is not well documented in the district. Most of the jobs created
are in the local areas and this has a positive impact on preventing distress
migration. Though the survey does not give any conclusive proof, still it is
observed that the implementation of the scheme has some positive impact on
migration. A word of caution has to be made at this point, that these observations
cannot be generalised as it is too early to make conclusions about the scheme
without the completion of the lean season.
Like other projects the NREGS has been successful in creating sustainable assets
in the district. The major thrust areas of the NREGS are water conservation,
social forestry and reclamation of wasteland. These projects not only help in
creation of jobs and assets but also increase the efficiency and productivity of the
land in the long run. For instance, watershed development projects help in
increasing in the water table of the area that ultimately results in increased
availability of water for both drinking and irrigation. Consequently, more areas
can be brought under cultivation and existing areas can be productively used.
Similarly, social forestry programme leads to the afforestation of lands which is
the need of the hour in the dry areas like Gulbarga. Two such case studies have
been prepared along with this paper.
Monitoring and transparency is the major thrust of NREGS. It is necessary that
social audit to be conducted where all the documents regarding the scheme
especially the muster rolls are made available to the public for inspection. They
have the right to question the correctness of the muster rolls. The social audit for
the first year in Gulbarga is scheduled to be held during the next month. The
details of the muster roll are planning to be put in the public domain. Another
significant feature of the scheme is the emphasis on capacity building as this is a
paradigm shift in the rural development and poverty reduction activities. Thus
training and IEC activities form an important part of the project. We have also
attempted convergence with other schemes along with NREGA. The example is
combining of the adult literacy programmes at the worksites. Many of the workers
are illiterate and hence are the target group for the adult literacy activities. The
objective of this initiative is to replace the thumb impressions with signatures in
one month. Another inititative being attempted is to carry out primary health
check up for the workers in the worksite itself.
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Conclusions
The above discussion in this paper leads to certain conclusions. The study has
found positive impact of the scheme on these variables. The study reaches the
following conclusions. This scheme is successful in creating an impression in the
minds of people that it would help in minimising the pilferages and ensure the
benefits of government programmes reach the real beneficiaries. The scheme has
an impact in raising the standards of living and the agricultural wage level in the
villages. It is leading to the creation of durable community assets. More
importantly, the payment to the labourers is done through the accounts in banks
and post offices. This had laid the foundation for inculcating the savings habit in
the minds of people. If implemented properly with revision of minimum wage
from time to time, the distress migration from rural areas especially during the
off season can be checked. Finally, the scheme has the potential to change the
rural edifice of the district and can act as a model rural development scheme. The
authors put a word of caution that all these are first impressions of a scheme that
will be there for at least five years.
References
1. Ministry of Law and Justice (2005), “The Gazette of India” Extraordinary
part 11-Section 1 Ministry of Law and Justice (Legislative Department),
Government of India, September 7, 2005, New Delhi.
2. Government of Karnataka, (2005) “Karnataka Human Development Report
2005, Investing in Human Development” Planning and Statistics
Department, GoK, Bangalore
3. Rao, KS (2004), ‘Poverty Alleviation-Results of an Impact Assessment
Study” in Bhatt, MS Ed ‘Poverty Alleviation and Food Security in India
Problems and Policies’, Aakar Books, New Delhi.
4. Ananya, GD (2004) “Poverty Alleviation Programmes in India Some Issues
and Concerns” in Bhatt, MS ed ‘Poverty and food Security in India
Problems and Policies’, Aakar Books, New Delhi.
5. GoI (2006), “NREGA 2005 Operational Guidelines”, Ministry of Rural
Development, New Delhi.
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Success Stories
Case 1: - Earthen Drain in Saidapur village
This is a case where the selection and implementation of the work has been
successful in having an impact on the productivity of the village in addition to
creation of opportunities for work to the people. The authors visited the site of
the work in Saidapur village in Jewargi Taluka in Gulbarga district. There is an
irrigation tank in the village to provide irrigation facilities to 500 hectares of land.
However, on passage of time, another 200 hectares of land in the downstream of
the tank became water logged due to the seepage water from the tank. The small
canal leading from the tank also was of no use because of the small size and
getting silted. The Grama Panchayat did not have any funds at their disposal for
taking up cleaning de-silting and widening of the existing small drain. The NREGS
was the opportunity the villagers have been waiting for ages and they did not
want it to go unutilised. The work of an earthen drain was taken up leading to
reclaiming of 200 hectares of land by two seasons. The 200 hectares of land
brought under cultivation will add to the total productivity of the village. The
conservative estimate for the agricultural income puts the revenue at Rs. 5000/ a
hectare of dry land. This leads to the conclusion that the investment of
Rs.4,80,000 (approx) had ensured that the income of the village. This kind of
works serves the exact purpose of NREGS.
Case 2: - Renovation of traditional water body in Mashal village
Mashal village is situated on the North western side of the taluka bordering
Maharashtra state and is the head quarter of the Gram Pachayat. The area being
covered by black cotton soil and is under-laid by boulder trap/weathered trap.
Due to over exploitation of the ground water for agriculture and allied purposes
and scanty rainfall in the last five years, drastic lowering of water table was
noticed in the village. The village faced a very acute water crisis due to these
reasons. The bore-wells drilled in the village under the Calamity Relief Fund every
year produced very less amount of water. This has been a problematic village
always for the administration. Arrangements for the water supply through the
tankers had to be made from the month of January to June. The average cost for
the tanker water supply for the village per year worked out to be Rs 1,20,000. In
addition about Rs. 1,50,000 used to be spent on drilling of bore-wells for fining
out a permanent solution to the water scarcity problems. Thus, the village had to
spend around Rs 2,70,000 per year for the last three years. (This works out to be
Rs. 8,10,000).
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National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme was introduced in the district last
year. The villagers were very fast to realise the potential the scheme offer to
solve their problems related to the water scarcity. The villagers’ meeting held for
the purpose of planning for the scheme, the suggestion came from the villagers
to take up de-silting and renovation of an existing tank in the village. This
suggestion came from the realisation by the villagers that the only solution to
their water problem is to take measures to improve the ground water situation of
the village. The suggestion was accepted in the meeting and the work was taken
up.
The work included de-silting and deepening of the existing tank along with the
construction of a 3 KM long earthen drain an inlet for collecting the rain water
during the rainy season. The work was constructed as per the provisions of the
scheme. The estimate cost for the work is Rs 8,75,000. The work is under
progress and an amount of Rs. 6,84,000 is already spent. As the luck was on the
side of the villagers, there were untimely rains in the month of December and the
tank got filled up. This resulted in the recharge of the ground water in the village.
The bore-wells catering to the drinking water for the village got filled up and are
working properly. There is no demand for the supply of the water through the
tankers in the village. Recently a bore-well was drilled in a nearby hamlet near
the tank which produced a yield of 8172 Litres per Hour. There were a few wells
catering to the irrigation purpose in the village. These were also filled up bringing
more land under irrigation thereby increasing the economic production of the
village.
This success story has become an eye-opener for the villagers. Now they know
the benefits of taking up such schemes in the villages. The people have
demanded taking up more such works in the village which are being taken up
shortly.