• In FY 2009-10 upto July, 2.53 crore households have been provided work and 87.09 crore person-days have been generated. In FY 2008-09, women participation was 48%, which has increased to 52% upto in FY 2009-10 (upto July 2009)@

• Post-NREGA, there has been a revision of minimum wages across the country in last three years, and the average daily wage rate has increased from Rs. 75 to Rs. 87 in FY 2009-10 (upto July 2009)@

• Thus far, 7.33 crore NREGA bank and post office accounts have been opened@

• In FY 09-10, upto July-09, 21.76 lakh works have been undertaken, of which 51% relate  to water conservation helping to regenerate natural resources@

• Audit scrutiny in 58 blocks in Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand  (17 States) revealed that unemployment allowance was not paid to those workers, who could not be provided with employment within 15 days from the date on which work was requested for**

• Record maintenance, particularly at Gram Panchayat level was poor, demonstrating lack of reliability and authenticity of the reported figures**

• There were several cases of delayed payment of wages, for which no compensation was paid**

• In 246 Gram Panchayats in Assam, Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Manipur, Nagaland, Orissa, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand  and West Bengal (15 States), copies of muster rolls (MRs) were not available for public scrutiny in the GPs**

• Photographs of the applicants were not attached to job cards in 251 Gram Panchayatss in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal (13 States)

* Chakraborty, Pinaki (2007): Implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in India: Spatial Dimensions and Fiscal Implications, Bard College
** Performance Audit of the implementation of NREGA by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (2008)
@ Highlights of Quarterly Progress Report on National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), 15 September, 2009, Rural Development Ministry, http://www.pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=52639
 

OVERVIEW 

The NREGA evokes extreme reactions from supporters and opponents. When the scheme was launched in 200 districts in 2005, and later expanded to cover the entire country in 2008, its advocates hailed it as the beginning of a new era for rural India. However, it enraged India’s influential neo-liberal economists so much that one of them claimed he had found a better way of ‘wasting’ public money: showering of currency notes from helicopters. For now, the skeptics are silent mainly because of three reasons, a) the scheme is widely regarded as successful, b) It is being hailed as an important reason for the UPA’s return to power, and c) the recession-hit Western world is swearing by public expenditure on welfare. Of late, their criticism is mainly confined to corruption and malpractices, which, in all fairness, are rampant though not insurmountable. 

The NREGA differs from most poverty mitigation schemes so far in one fundamental way: It recognizes employment as a legal right. Its fringe benefits include inclusion of the rural poor in the banking system, regeneration of community assets and gender equality. The enactment of NREGA also signifies coming of age of Indian advocacy and civil society activism. The credit for converting a somewhat utopian idea into a policy push goes to numerous civil society activists, committed experts and grassroots organizations who worked for years to achieve this. Many of these activists are now working on effective social audits and a system of compensations for delay in wage payments.

Some leading NGOs in Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh have enrolled graduate students from leading universities and hip urban youths to run NREGA helpdesks. At places they are also helping in conducting social audits. For instance a month-long struggle with the help of young Delhi University volunteers led to a compensation of Rs 2000 each to 174 villagers in Khunti and Murhu blocks in Jharkhand amounting to Rs 3.48 lakh in June 2009. These villagers’ wages had been delayed in gross violation of the statutes.   
 
Despite the optimism generated by the implementation of the NREGA, it runs the risk of degenerating into yet another government dole in the absence of comprehensive reforms in India’s local governance and public service delivery mechanism. Many experts argue that an effective execution of the NREGA requires a cadre of functionaries accountable to the village Panchayats with adequate funding and a comprehensive roadmap.