Sanitation projects, increasing green cover among top priorities for MGNREGA

NEW DELHI: Sanitation projects to reduce open defecation, increasing green cover and emphasis on creating assets form the crux of the Narendra Modi-led government’s blueprint for redeploying UPA’s flagship social sector programme — the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act or MGNREGA.

Top officials aware of the government’s re-orientation roadmap for the rural employment guarantee scheme, being steered by rural development minister Nitin Gadkari, told ET that assessment of its outcome would go beyond number of man days of work offered to tangible ground-level changes it achieved.

For instance, people digging a pond will have to mention the storage capacity being created, its impact on groundwater level, and so on. Similarly, folks erecting compost pits will have to outline the quantum of compost they will generate.

According to the officials, it is proposed that about half of the scheme’s fund allocations will be earmarked for rural sanitation projects and plantation of trees along highways and rural roads. While farm-related projects will continue to get 60% of MGNREGA funds, as under the UPA, the NDA is putting in place a more rigorous system to monitor asset creation.

The plan is in sync with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley maiden Budget speech earlier this month, where he said wage employment would be provided under MGNREGA “through works that are more productive, asset creating and substantially linked to agriculture and allied activities”.

“The leader – who could be the NREGA sachiv or any villager representing his or her fellow villagers asking for work under the programme – will have to stipulate the outcomes,” one of the officials said, requesting anonymity.

While payments won’t be contingent on achieving these outcomes, ‘consistently poor outcomes will need to be explained’, the official explained. The idea of planting trees and granting rights and responsibilities to the poor to boost their income is not new. It had been used in undivided Andhra Pradesh a few years ago.

This idea will now be rolled out nationally in 2014-15. Villagers will be given Rs 15 as maintenance fee for every sapling that survives. This is expected to work as an incentive for them to care for the saplings and follow a specified schedule in the first year of plantation (apart from watering the plants).

The species of trees to be planted would be decided by local communities in consultation with state forest and horticulture departments. The National Highways Authority of India and the rural roads departments are expected to identify the highways and roads along which tree plantation can begin by the end of this month.

As for the sanitation component, the national sanitation programme will pay for material and NREGA will pay for labour.

Monitoring to see whether intended outcomes are being achieved would need a higher level of scrutiny than the present system entails. “The states are a concern. Some have very poor monitoring abilities,” the official conceded.

However, the proposed overhaul has evoked mixed reactions. Experts agree that more compost pits, trees, and ponds are urgently needed to shore up rural India’s weakening soils, loss of trees and falling groundwater levels.

The question is whether these problems should be fixed using MGNREGA. Corruption and payment delays have shrunk the number of people seeking work under the NREGA, said Himanshu, assistant professor in economics at JNU’s Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies.

“MGNREGA is not a sanitation programme, but a safety net for people who can demand work whenever they need it. In the process, some assets also get created,” he told ET, adding that the Act ceases to deliver ‘work available on demand’ the moment it gets linked to another program like sanitation. "What if the money for sanitation is not released? Then NREGA, with 20% of its budget earmarked for sanitation, will suffer," he added.