|
February
24, 2005
MAIN PROBLEMS IN THE NATIONAL RURAL EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE BILL, 2004(Note
Submitted to the UPA-Left Coordination Committee by the Left Parties)
The Rural ScenarioAn
unparalleled and comprehensive crisis has taken firm root in rural India,
resulting in impoverishment, food shortages and hunger. Growth of agricultural
production fell from 3.5 in the 1980s to 2.0 per cent per annum in the 1990s,
and real income growth fell from 4.5 to 2.5 per cent per annum over the same
period. By 2001, per capita foodgrain availability had fallen to lower than that
in the 1950s. Workforce participation rates in rural areas have declined, more
for rural women than men. The Planning Commission reports a fall in employment
growth from 2.04 per cent during 1983-94 to 0.98 per cent during 1994-2000
largely on account of agriculture and community social and personal services,
which together account for seven-tenth of total employment. Even though this was
accompanied by a deceleration in the rate of growth of labour force from 2.29
per cent in 1987-94, to 1.03 per cent in 1993-2000, unemployment has grown since
labour force growth outstrips the growth of employment. The
crisis of unemployment in the rural areas has been precipitated by slow growth
of agriculture in general and foodgrains production in particular, combined with
substantial cutbacks in rural development expenditure by the Central Government.
Rural development expenditure has dropped from an average of 13% of GDP during
the Eighth Plan period to around 5% of GDP during the Tenth Plan. The
extreme manifestations of this distress are the unabated starvation deaths and
peasant suicides. The Common Minimum Programme
As
stated by the Minister of Rural Development, Shri Raghuvansh Prasad Singh in the
Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Act: “ Recognizing the urgent need to
ensure a certain minimum days of wage-employment, the United Progressive
Alliance (UPA) Government has declared in its National Common Minimum Programme
(NCMP) that it ‘…will immediately enact a National Employment Guarantee Act.
This will provide a legal guarantee for at least 100 days of employment,
to begin with, on asset-creating public works programmes every year at minimum
wages for at least one able-bodied person in every rural, urban poor and lower
middle class household“. Main Problems And Necessary
Changes In The National Rural Employment
Guarantee Bill, 2004 The present Bill falls far short of expectations and is woefully inadequate as a measure to even partially address the rural distress.
Demand:
There should be a time-bound
extension to the whole of India within 5 years. Once an area
is brought under coverage, it cannot be denotified.
Demand: Universal entitlement to the job guarantee and to the unemployment allowance, actual employment through self-selection
Demand: Statutory minimum wages for agricultural labourers applicable in the State at the time must be paid
Demand:
Household must be
defined as
a nuclear family
Demand:
The ability of State
Governments to generate works depends on the availability of finances and
flexible definition of permissible works. The
unemployment allowance entitlement and mechanism must be strengthened in three
ways: i.
Strong measures to ensure timely devolution of funds from the Centre to
the States. Economic capacity may be defined as follows: economic capacity is
the receipt of funds by the States from the Centre in advance for the EGS. ii.
Once funds have become available, the State government must either
provide work or pay the unemployment allowance. If economic capacity does not
exist, the Centre is liable for the associated unemployment allowance payment.
iii.
Works must be defined in a more flexible manner, as below.
iv.
Loopholes and escape clauses for non-payment of unemployment allowance
should be plugged.
Demand:
Flexible
and broad-based definition of permissible works that includes productive works,
sustainable agricultural practices, improvement
in the quality of life
and the provision of public services as determined by the state council keeping
in mind local requirements
Demand:
At
least one-third of workers employed in a particular Block should be women
Demand:
A fully centrally
funded programme where:
i.
States’ liability to pay unemployment allowance commences after receipt
of funds from the Centre, until which the Centre is liable.
ii.
The Centre must meet the
wage component and finance material costs in the ratio of 60:40 labour:material.
iii. To meet the administrative costs of the Programme, the Centre must add an additional component amounting to 3% of the total spending on wages and materials.
Demand: Absentees may be debarred from eligibility to the unemployment allowance for the period of absence only
Demand:
50 per cent of the
funds must be devolved to Panchayats
Demand:
The Schedules should
only be changed by Parliament Conclusion Once
these lacunae are removed, the EGA will be a major move in the right direction.
It will provide much-needed employment for the rural poor and can become the
basis for the necessary regeneration of the rural economy, without which
sustainable aggregate growth is not possible. |
|