The Hindu : National : "Job guarantee Bill fails to do justice to CMP"

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Wednesday, Mar 16, 2005

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National

"Job guarantee Bill fails to do justice to CMP"

By Our Staff Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MARCH 15. The National Advisory Council (NAC) member, Jean Dreze, has said that the National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill (NREGB) 2004, is so weak that it defeats the purpose of "employment guarantee". It has also failed to do justice to the first pledge of the National Common Minimum Programme of the UPA Government, he said in a presentation to the standing committee on rural development.

According to Mr. Dreze, the Bill appears to be a pale shadow of the NAC draft prepared in August 2004. Pointing towards essential safeguards that were lacking in the Bill, he said all adults in rural areas should be entitled to apply for work. "Targeting" was both unnecessary and undesirable.

Once the Act comes into force in a particular area, there should be no possibility of "switching off" the employment guarantee. The Act should come into force in the whole of rural India (including Class B and C municipalities) within five years or so and labourers should be entitled to the statutory minimum wage of agricultural labourers in the relevant State, under all circumstances.

"In the absence of these safeguards, NREGB 2004 fails to provide a genuine employment guarantee. It is essential that these safeguards are restored."

Mr. Dreze said: "we take this opportunity to mention also that the NREGB 2004 places an excessive financial burden on the State Governments. Given the dismal state of the State Government finances, it is important to reduce this burden by enhancing the contribution of the Central Government to enable the State Governments to initiate Employment Guarantee Programmes without delay.''

`Counter-productive'

Targeting was unnecessary as the work requirement was itself a reliable means of identifying those who needed this kind of social support. Targeting was also counter-productive as it invariably left out many poor people, as in the case of the "BPL list", Mr. Dreze said, adding that the Bill did not guarantee that minimum wages of any kind would be paid to the labourers. Indeed, it allowed existing statutory minimum wages to be superseded with ad hoc wage norms, to be determined by the Central Government. The norms were completely flexible, with different rates for different areas. Aside from the unconstitutionality of paying less than the statutory minimum wage, this gave the Central Government another opportunity to undermine the guarantee by setting the wage rate arbitrarily low.

The Bill, he said, gave a very limited role to the panchayati raj institutions in implementation of the "Employment Guarantee Schemes". An opportunity had been missed to hand over substantial powers and responsibilities to gram panchayats, intermediate panchayats and district panchayats. Similarly, little effort had been made to involve people in the planning, implementation and monitoring processes through gram sabhas, he said.

The Bill allowed only a narrow range of works to be taken up under the employment guarantee schemes. The focus was on nine specific types of work, concerned mainly with creation of durable assets.

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