The Hindu : National : Include NREGP study in universities: Minister

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Wednesday, Apr 16, 2008
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Include NREGP study in universities: Minister

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: Union Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh has called for the inclusion of field visits for the study of National Rural Employment Guarantee Programmes (NREGP) as a part of the curriculum in the universities.

This would help students acquaint themselves with the process of generation of livelihood and mobilisation of surplus human resources in a democratic framework.

In a letter to Chairman of the University Grant Commission Sukhadeo Thorat; secretary-general of the Association of Indian Universities, Dayanand Dongaonkar; and all the Vice-Chancellors of Indian universities, Mr. Singh highlighted the potentials of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 (NREGA) and said that it spanned a range of possibilities.

The Minister felt that some important aspects of the Act and significant implications of its intervention in rural economy could be studied by students during their field visits. These include rights-based design and operations and the profile of the rural households engaging with the NREGA, labour market relations, wage-work opportunity, migration, livelihood security, income generation, and nature and impact of assets created under the NREGA.

Mr. Singh said the significance of the NREGA was in the fact that “it operates at many levels, viz as a social safety net for the vulnerable by providing a fall-back employment source, when other employment alternatives are scarce or inadequate and is a right-based framework for wage employment programmes, by conferring legal entitlements and the right to demand employment upon the workers and makes the government accountable for providing employment in a time bound manner. Finally, its operational design built around strong decentralisation and lateral accountability to local community offers a new way of doing business and a model of governance reform anchored on the principles of transparency and grass root democracy.”

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