EDITORIAL ANALYSIS:  The Advent of ‘Appsolute’ chaos in NREGA – INSIGHTSIAS

 Source: The Hindu

• Prelims: Current events of national importance(Different social service Schemes,MGNREGA)
• Mains GS Paper I & II: Social empowerment, schemes for vulnerable sections, development and management of social sectors/services.

ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS

• The Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) launched the National Mobile Monitoring Software (NMMS) app,a new application meant for “improving citizen oversight and increasing transparency” in National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA)
• It is to be deployed by NREGA Mates, local women at the panchayat level who are selected and trained to monitor NREGA worksites.
• The main feature of the app is the real time,photographed, geotagged attendance of every worker to be taken once in each half of the day.

 

 

Puucho ON THE ISSUE

Context

MGNREGA:

• The scheme was introduced as a social measure that guarantees “the right to work”.
• The key tenet of this social measure and labour law is that the local government will have to legally provide at least 100 days of wage employment in rural India to enhance their quality of life.
• Proactively ensuring social inclusion by strengthening the livelihood base of rural poor.
• Creation of durable assets in rural areas such as wells, ponds, roads and canals.
• Must be Citizen of India to seek NREGA benefits.
• Job seeker has completed 18 years of age at the time of application.
• The applicant must be part of a local household (i.e. application must be made with local Gram Panchayat).
• Applicants must volunteer for unskilled labour.
• The Ministry of Rural Development (MRD), Govt of India is monitoring the entire implementation of this scheme in association with state governments.
• Individual beneficiary oriented works can be taken up on the cards of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, small or marginal farmers or beneficiaries of land reforms or beneficiaries under the Indira Awaas Yojana of the Government of India.
• Within 15 days of submitting the application or from the day work is demanded, wage employment will be provided to the applicant.
• Right to get unemployment allowance in case employment is not provided within fifteen days of submitting the application or from the date when work is sought.
• Social Audit of MGNREGA works is mandatory, which lends to accountability and transparency.
• The Gram Sabha is the principal forum for wage seekers to raise their voices and make demands.
• It is the Gram Sabha and the Gram Panchayat which approves the shelf of works under MGNREGA and fix their priority.

 

National Mobile Monitoring Software (NMMS):

• The NMMS App permits taking real time attendance of workers at Mahatma Gandhi NREGS worksites along with geotagged photographs, which will increase citizen oversight of the programme besides potentially enabling processing payments faster.
• Area Officer Monitoring App facilitates them to record their findings online along with time stamped and go-coordinate tagged photographs for all the schemes of Deptt of Rural Development- Mahatma Gandhi NREGS, PMAYG, PMGSY.
• This would also enable not only better record keeping of inspections by field and supervisory officials but also facilitate analysis of the findings for better programme implementation.

 

Key issues with the application:

• The Ministry’s order of manual attendance is in violation of the NREGA law and also flagged a series of technical and sociological issues with the app.
• Section 15 – Schedule 1 that lays down rules about the muster rolls — clearly says that the muster roll must be accessible to the workers on demand all day during all working hours. If The muster roll is available only digitally, access will be limited.
• A stable network is a must for real time monitoring; unfortunately, it remains patchy in much of rural India. This could lead to workers not being able to mark their attendance, and consequently lose a day of wages.
• With no physical attendance records signed by workers anymore, workers have no proof of their attendance and work done.
• The app specifies that it is mandatory for workers to upload two timestamps photos within a predetermined time window designed by the app. Section 3 of the Act states that workers are entitled to their wages on the basis of work completed by them that is on a piece rate basis.
• The app discourages women from being mates which fundamentally undermines the Ministry’s own repeated push towards encouraging women workers as NREGA mates.
• Having a smartphone is now mandatory for mates to record attendance on the NMMS. However, many women from poorer households don’t have access to smartphones.
• The app has been designed completely in English And there is no technical help provided to redress problems.
• Officials and activists confirmed these implementation errors had been evident throughout the pilot process. However, there is no information available publicly about the errors found and measures taken to address them.

 

The depth of distress related to women:

• The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act(MGNREGA) sites are probably the best places to understand the compulsions of millions of women to work.
  • For example, one particular project in Kalaburagi district focuses on creating more than 200 percolation ponds,which are designed to address the declining levels of groundwater and to help recharge wells. Since Most of these women are unable to dig the land, they do not get the piece rate of ₹309, they get only₹280 to ₹285.
• During the agricultural season, all the women worked on the lands of others, earning around the same as the MGNREGA site. But the mechanization of agricultural operations has drastically decreased workdays to less than three months a year.
• Many women therefore become part time construction workers. They migrate to construction sites for a few months, with their families or with other women from the village. Most of them do not get registered as construction workers making them ineligible for any legal benefits accruing to them from the Construction Workers’ Welfare Board.
• Many women make twig baskets and brooms. They walk from village to village, often 25 km a day,to sell the baskets. It takes two days to make 10 baskets for which they make ₹10 per basket.
• The high prices of essential commodities have led to a huge cut in women’s consumption of vegetables and pulses.
• The deprivation of nourishment that women face due to high prices and low incomes is another dimension of the ‘compulsory’ woman workers life.
• With the deep penetration of capitalist processes in rural India, there is a crisis of livelihood options.

 

Steps that need to be taken to increase Women Participation in workforce:

• Providing Skill Training: Skill training of women in job roles aligned to the gig, platform and care sectors as well as other emerging sectors such as those covered under the Production-Linked Incentive Scheme needs to be encouraged.
• Online skill training can also be beneficial to women who face constraints in physical mobility due to social norms, domestic responsibilities or concerns over safety.
• More Investments: Greater investment in better health and care facilities would not only improve the well-being of India’s people and hence their economic productivity, but will also lead to more employment opportunities for women.
• Enabling women to acquire both physical assets (through credit facilities, revolving funds, etc.) and employable skills is crucial for them to take up employment opportunities in new and emerging sectors.
• Providing Child Care Services: This initiative will significantly support women in managing their care responsibilities, enabling them to devote sufficient time to paid employment.
• The National Creche Scheme which lays out specific provisions for working women has suffered diminished government funding. Revitalizing the provisions of the scheme and adding a network of public and workplace crèches can be hugely beneficial.

What steps need to be taken to improve MGNREGS:

• Must Ensure Work is Provided: The government must ensure that work is provided notwithstanding the demand.
  • The government should expand the scheme and focus on value addition and multiply community asset works.
• Strengthening the Scheme: There is a need for better coordination between various government departments and the mechanism to allot and measure the work.
  • This is one of the best welfare schemes in recent years and it has helped the rural poor.
  • However, government officials must take the initiative to implement the scheme and must not block the work.
• Gender Wage Gap:
  Some discrepancies in the payouts need to be addressed, too. Women in the sector, on an average, earn 24% less than their male counterparts.

 

Way Forward

• Instead of focusing on this app or introducing other complex technological reforms, social audits must be strengthened.
• Any application meant to improve citizen oversight and transparency should be implemented with consultation and discussion with NREGA workers, functionaries, or government field officials.
• We need training programmes with well-defined outcomes for women’s digital access and to mentor them to take up employment opportunities in emerging sectors.
• There should be a process to monitor and evaluate programmes and address systemic and on the ground challenges.
• Implementation of minimum wage in rural India is conceivable only with strong movements of agricultural workers’ unions.
• While rural labourers should also be entitled to a cash transfer, the schedule of rates for women at MGNREGA projects based on impossibly high productivity rates must be lowered and the work sites made more worker friendly.

 

 QUESTION FOR PRACTICE

The new National Mobile Monitoring Software(NMMS) application has problems that are clearly eroding the right to work. Critically analyze.

(200 WORDS, 10 MARKS)