The NREGS came as a result of the political response to collective action in form of the people’s movement and articulation of the need rural labor to provide work on demand. There are two schools of thought operating regarding the acceptability of NREGS. One school of thought who backs it up says that it is a means by which the rural poor can get minimum wages for their livelihood. The other holds that-- when even the NSS says that the rural unemployment rate is only 1% what is the need of such a scheme which is also facing charges of large scale corruption?
Please contribute as to what do you all feel about this issue??
Pulkit Gaur (30028)
6 comments:
Interesting topic sir. Having seen the ground reality, NREGS has attracted much labour who get a fair enough amount for the work (in terms of hours and utility) they do. However, this is impacting the labour required for agricultural activities. High labour prices are forcing farmers to send their children to fields and thus, an entire new generation gets affected
Hope this leads to a good discussion.
Before I went to the fieldwork, I had the presumption that the Government work would be in shambles and disarray (providing any work has been undertaken there by the Govt).
But I come back more knowledgeable.
I know that the minimum wages are determined according to a standard amount of work subjected to a verification and is around the range of Rs. 60(min.) to Rs. 100(max.) {Please pardon me if I have got this fact wrong, but then it not the moot point of my post).
I saw people getting only an average of Rs. 70 (i'm being optimistic here) and that too after the said total standard work was done. Call me crazy but I'd consider it better that not have this scheme anymore.
Granted, there is a lot of scope in this scheme which when implemented would be so much better for all the parties concerned (except for the people with vested interests), but at the same time it has at least put some extra income into the family's kitty which is a great work despite the high corruption rate.
What I don't get here, is why such a good scheme has been put to use only to distribute money to the rural poor and why isn't the center theme is creating a good infrastructure.
I mean it really is a good example of following Keynes' theory of providing people money to first dig a hole and then again to cover it up only to raise demand and consumption level with an intention to alleviate economic problems of rural poor. I saw in the village some of the work being done which really had no utility or things that won't even matter 2-3 down the line. My question is why not do the same thing by having the intention to create a superb infrastructure which would result in benefits to not just the rural poor in the short term but for a long time to come plus removing some of the country's problems???
I think we have lesson here in our neighbourhood that we'd all (especially the policy makers) would learn a thing or two from.
I would say lets learn a trick or two from THE DRAGON.
It would be very difficult to use unskilled workers (most workers who report to NREGS are unskilled casual labourers.) to build a 'superb' infrastructure. NREGs also aims at providing maximum employment opportunity possible. The plot will be all but lost when we incorpoarte giant modern day machines(which are indispensible in modern day infrastructure building) instead of men. Also, I would say, there is not much one could learn from the 'DRAGON' as regards NREGS. If. one could, one could as well learn from the second world war Nazi Labour camps....
the way work is done under nrega it has just become a money distribution scheme, however if some changes are brought about such as usage of machines their is high probability that good quality sustainable infrastructure could be built which will solve both the purposes one providing employment, two to build rural infrastructure useful for overall development.
money distributing machine??? Not so in Bihar or Jharkhand. Not even in Gujarat(Surat).
what does one mean by 'money distribution machine'???
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