The Hindu : More takers for employment guarantee scheme

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 08, 2003

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Other States - Maharashtra

More takers for employment guarantee scheme

By Mahesh Vijapurkar

MUMBAI JUNE 7. Given the drought and poor availability of work on farms this year, attendance at the 12,652 worksites of the Employment Guarantee Scheme across Maharashtra shot up to 7.5 lakh persons a week ago, which is several times higher than the turn-out in 1992.

By tradition, the attendance is treated as an index of the drought's intensity. Such a high attendance is unusual given that EGS is no more such a popular social welfare measure mainly because of huge leaks, untimely payment of wages and general lack of monitoring.

In fact, the late V. S. Page, a senior constructive politician who was the architect of the scheme in the late 70s, had begun to dismay about a decade later, often saying, ``I may like to see the burial of a child I helped baptise.''

The Comptroller and Auditor-General of India had called for ``urgent and serious consideration'' of the scheme on several counts, but the State has not responded. The EGS, for which funds are raised through special levies with a matching grant from the State Government, has always seen lower expenditure than the net proceeds of the taxes.

The accumulations in this EG Fund are a high Rs. 5,637 crore at March-end 2003. Annually around Rs. 450 crores is raised; the Government adds a similar amount to the swelling kitty. These funds, by law, cannot be used for other purposes and a cash-strapped State, continues to provide the matching grants but has done precious little to find ways to deploy it usefullly with the twin objective of giving jobs and by that, building assets.

If it has done something in the past towards it by sinking wells in private lands and planting fruit-bearing trees in farm holdings, it has not even bothered to check their survival rates. Even wages are paid, sometimes, a year after the distress employment.

The EGS' ability to drought-proof the people by giving not only jobs to retain their purchasing power but create permanent assets gets scant respect. Percolation tanks that would help increase water tables are not transferred to zilla parishads, often leading to their wasting away. Internal roads in villages of over 500 population are not completed in time, thus allowing their degeneration. Since funds available for the EGS is exceptionally high, no excuse is possible. ``Efficacy of the principle is not in doubt,'' an official familiar with the EGS said, ``its implementation is.''

Mid-week, the Maharashtra Chief Minister, Sushilkumar Shinde, spoke of increasing attendance at the EGS worksites and the capacity to absorb another lakh of people before the rains come. Which, however, does not mean that the scheme is being efficiently executed.

Sources say — backed by the CAG's 2000 report — ``it never was in its history.'' A haunting question is: if people do not come to EGS sites because permanent assets have been built, and in effect it has drought-proofed the State to give people sustenance, then why does drought recur? And even drinking water becomes scarce?

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More takers for employment guarantee scheme