People's Democracy

NREG Act An Achievement Of Long Struggle

Hannan Mollah

THE demands for ‘right to work’ as a fundamental right is as old as our independence. The Left movement in this country brought the idea that political freedom without economic freedom cannot be complete. The right to live will be incomplete without the right to food and some other basic needs of life. This is related to the opportunity to get some gainful employment to earn livelihood. But it is yet to be achieved.

Just we observed anniversary of our independence. This was marked by one step forward towards that goal. Though not for all but at least for poorer sections of rural people, some sort of partial guarantee has been conceived in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill 2004. In the given situation, it is not a mean achievement. There is element of guarantee of work in the bill, though not for all able bodied Indians, but for one person from each rural household in 200 districts. It is partial and it will take five years to cover the whole of rural India.

EXPLOSIVE PROBLEM  

It will not be out of place to mention that the most serious and explosive problem in our country is unemployment. This is both in rural and urban areas of India. The Rural Development Ministry has to bring a similar bill for the urban unemployment. We would, in the outset, demand that the government should keep this in mind and plan how to combat urban joblessness.

The present bill proposes to give 100 days to work to one unskilled job seeker from each family, who is ready to do the work offered by government against a prescribed wage. This, it appears, will be accepted by the rural poor unemployed. The rest of the middle class and educated unemployed will not come for such work. Still it is good that it is a beginning to ensure guaranteed jobs. We have to increase the number of days from the present 100 days in a year, in course of time.

The rural unemployment has increased substantially in the last two decades since the globalisation policies were accepted by the government. The defeat of the BJP-led NDA was, in no small measure, a result of the worsening employment situation in the country under its rule. The UPA came to power due to severe suffering of the rural people, specially the poor, and its promise in its poll manifesto to generate rural employment, encouraged poor people to vote for them. But the situation has not improved much till date. The mid-term appraisal of the Tenth Plan opined, “The employment situation in the economy presents a serious problem. This appraisal suggests that unemployment rate for the economy as a whole, based on the current daily status of employment, would have increased from 8.87 per cent in the base year 2001-02 to 9.11 per cent in 2004-05. This implies that total employment increased slower than labour force growth. It grew from 3.35 crore in 2001-02 to 3.63 crore in 2004-05 with employment growing at a rate of 1.71 per cent per annum against a growth in the labour force of 1.80 per cent per annum.

In this situation, pro-employment policy is urgently required. It is noteworthy that agriculture accounts for over 55 per cent of total employment in the country, while contributing only 22 per cent of the GDP. The slowdown in agriculture during the NDA rule, has only worsened during the first three years of the Tenth plan period and the mid-term appraisal suggests only 1 per cent growth rate per annum. This has led to near stagnation of employment generation in rural areas, the landless workers being the worst hit. The National Employment Guarantee Bill may help in generating some more employment, reduce poverty to some extent and increase the growth rate a little.

LEFT PARTIES’ INTERVENTION

It is the implementation of globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation policy at the Fund-Bank dictate that created the above-mentioned impact on rural unemployment. Pressure was built up on the government by WTO and MNCs, to reduce social security measures in the country, specially in rural area. Their agents and advocates are raising the slogan of scarcity of fund. They forget that the rich ate up more than one lakh crores rupees by not repaying bank loan’s leading to huge non-performing assets in banks. Thousands of crores of rupees in tax concessions were given to these sections by the government. But there was much hue and cry when the government decided to spend some fund for the poor. If this act is implemented sincerely, the fund will go to the rural poor who will spend the money for their day to day living. This will not only create durable assets and services in rural India, it will also expand market for industrial goods and that will help to increase production and remove stagnation in industry and market to some extent.

When the bill was first placed in parliament, it was full of loop holes. It was sent to the parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Development, which took seven months to examine the bill and submit its unanimous report to the parliament. As a member of the Standing Committee, I submitted a large number of amendments. The committee invited suggestions from the public and 106 memoranda were submitted. The committee considered all those memoranda and called twenty experts for interview. The All India Agricultural Workers Union, CITU, All India Democratic Women’s Association, etc submitted memoranda and the leaders of our mass organisations, apart from many renowned Left intellectuals, appeared before the committee and argued for improvement of the bill. After listening to all of them, the committee discussed the bill and formulated 53 amendments to 33 clauses of the bill. This was presented to parliament. The government accepted most of those recommendations and submitted government amendments on those lines. The Left parties still had some suggestions, the government discussed those grievances with Left leaders and accepted 6 more amendments to be included in the bill.

PROVISIONS OF THE BILL

There are some good features of the bill. Employment will be offered to one adult member of each rural family, who is ready to accept the job on prescribed wage for 100 days in a year. If the government fails to give a job, the state government will pay him/her unemployment allowance at prescribed rate for as long as a job could not be arranged.

Panchayats have been empowered by this Act. All the schemes/projects will be selected, planned and implemented by Panchayati Raj bodies. There will be a council to oversee the work at national, state and district level in which members will be taken from among women, SC, ST, OBC and minority group. The programme officer will be appointed by the state government and he will ensure that one third of the beneficiaries are women. The cost of the programme will be born by the central and state governments, on 90:10 basis. There will be compensation of Rs 25,000 if any worker dies during work. Minimum wage has been fixed at not less than Rs 60 per day. Schemes will be implemented on government land, SC/ST land and government vested land distributed to the poor people and on Indira Awas Yojna land. The schemes will be taken up first in the 200 most backward districts of the country, and gradually the entire rural India will be covered in five years. The central government will send to the states the Employment Guarantee Fund in advance for smooth functioning of the projects. If 10 workers are registered at a place, the work/project may be taken up.

But there are some weaknesses in this Act. The main weakness is that it is not demand driven, universal and self-targeting. Anybody who wants to work should be given work. We have to fight for it in future. The 10 per cent cost is to be borne by the state and it may be difficult for many states. The unemployment allowance rate is very low. Panchayats will be over-burdened but there is no proposal to strengthen then to implement such huge projects.

A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT 

But in spite of all such limitations, it is a great achievement of our struggle. It is a good beginning. We had to fight for decades to get this right, and now we have to fight for its proper implementation. We are still fighting for two more Acts viz (a) a comprehensive central act for agricultural workers and (b) a central act for unorganised sectors workers. The UPA government has promised to make such laws also. The National Advisory Council has been asked to prepare drafts for those bills. I submitted a private members bills for the welfare of agricultural workers in which I raised many issues facing them. We hope those issues will be addressed in the coming bills. Our union (the AIAWU), along with other democratic forces, should forge a our struggle for expediting the process of making of those laws also. If we succeed to get those two laws enacted after, the NREG Act, very large sections of the poor people will be brought under some legal protection. About 50 crores of people will be benefited by these three Acts. Let us carry on our struggle to that end.