The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act aims at enhancing the livelihood security of people in rural areas by guaranteeing hundred days of wage-employment in a financial year to a rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.
In Garhwa rural parts, NREGA serves as an effective safety net for the unemployed, especially during years of famine and drought, supplementing household incomes and reducing migration to cities by villagers in search of work. It helps the rural poor economically by not just putting cash in their hands, but also helping them create sustainable assets.
The Act also seeks to create durable assets and strengthen the livelihood resource base of the rural poor. The choice of works suggested in the Act address causes of chronic poverty like drought, deforestation, soil erosion, so that the process of employment generation is on a sustainable basis.
“People get 100 days of employment in a year and get Rs95-100 per day and, hence, are able to earn close to Rs10,000 every year,”
Outcomes of programme implementation in the year 2010-11 are as follows:
- Increasing Employment Opportunities: In 2010-11, 70894 thousand households were provided employment and 31.91 lakh persondays of employment were generated.
- Increasing Outreach to the poor and marginalised: Self-targeting in nature, the Programme had high work participation for marginalised groups like SC (34.44%), ST(16.36%),women (34.55%) in 2010- 11.
- Strengthening Natural Base: In 2010-11, 3394.9434 lakh works have been undertaken, of which 30% were water conservation, 11% rural connectivity and 1% land development works completed
- Financial Inclusion of the poor: With a view to universalise the system of wage payments through institutional accounts, it has been recommended to all States to disburse wages through Post Offices and Bank Accounts. 74823 NREGA bank and post office accounts have been opened to disburse wages in FY 2010-11.
- Financial Inclusion of the poor: With a view to universalise the system of wage payments through institutional accounts, it has been recommended to all States to disburse wages through Post Offices and Bank Accounts. 74823 NREGA bank and post office accounts have been opened to disburse wages in FY 2010-11.
Demand Of Employment
The main objective of NREGA is to meet employment demand. The number of households
provided employment was 62597 in FY 2010-11 (See Figure I for Block-wise employment
provided and Annexure-I for details on employment generated).
Figure 1: Demand for Employment met: Financial Year 2010-11 upto March, 2009
Expenditure
The availability of funds with the districts during 2010-11 under NREGA was Rs 5418.769 lakhs , with Rs 3714.02 lakhs as Centre release, and Rs 1230.93 lakhs as Opening Balance, Rs 417.666 lakhs as State share. As against this, an amount of Rs 2497.46573 lakhs has been utilised.
Performance
Social audit
The Act was amended to provide for procedures on conducting social audit atleast once in six months, making it the district to be covered by such a check, which uncovered some cases of corruption, irregularities and delayed payments.Section 17 of NREGA provides for social audit of all works under a Gram Panchayat by the Gram Sabha. The Gram Panchayat has to provide records for all the social audits. The ministry has accorded utmost importance to organisation of Social Audits by gram panchayats and issued instructions to districts to make necessary arrangement for the purpose.
