Despite leakages, NREGA a success

THE OTHER SIDE: Civil rights groups and the govt feel that despite the leakages, the NREGA is working well.

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Udaipur: One year after the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was put in place, there have been lapses and leakages. But there are some who've raised a voice.

Confident and candid, Dama just did what most people in a backward village of Rajasthan often fail to do — he spoke up against getting paid less.

Dama, a resident of Dhar village, was being paid Rs 30 per day as against the provision of Rs 73 for digging earth. "I was very scared to say anything earlier. But now I know it is our right," says Dama.

Farmers like Dama want to know about the flow of money, muster rolls and measurements. With poor rains for the past eight years, his family of eleven has seen poverty at its worst. But last year has been different.

After demanding work in four slots under the NREGA programme, the family is in much better state and Dama's wife, Vanshi Bai, is relishing the newfound economic independence. "I've brought myself clothes and jewellery. I didn't ask my husband for money," she says.

Guarantee for employment means different things to different people. For Vanshi Bai, it's about a whole new experience of economic independence; for Dama, it means his son would not have to migrate that often, and for the entire family, it means more togetherness.

Nonetheless, leakages are yet to be completely plugged. In almost all the gram panchayats where social audits were done, there were reports of less payment, improper measurement of work and in some cases, forged muster rolls.

Civil rights groups as well as the government feel that despite the leakages, the scheme is working well.

"In the process of social audit that we've seen in Rajasthan, like Rajiv Gandhi has once said, if you send Rs 1 down, it is 15 paise that reaches where it has to. In Rajasthan, it is now the reverse of that," says an activist, Aruna Roy.

With the government gearing up for the second phase of the programme, the people hope that many more poor districts have jobs at their doorstep and that the criteria for the selection of these districts is economic and not political.