Employment Guarantee Shield

The hyphenation of China and India in this context is apposite, given their common ambition to achieve growth levels. But India8217;s powerful neighbour 8212;the world8217;s fastest growing economy no less 8212; is today besieged by fears of its own instability. China Daily recently carried a warning from the Chinese labour ministry that the 8220;growing income gap8221; may trigger social violence after 2010. Economic reform in China, incidentally, has seen a rollback of social welfare systems: its famed iron rice bowl has long cracked and the free and universal health coverage that its people once enjoyed has been discontinued. Today, its urban incomes are rising at double the rate of its rural incomes and within rural communities there is now emerging an almost unbridgeable gap between rich and poor.

There is, in this country, considerable admiration for China8217;s awesome growth trajectory, but even as we sigh in neighbourly envy let us understand the dire consequences of political apathy to social deprivation which China has now to contend with. The NREG signals that the Indian state is at least conscious about its constitutional responsibilities of ensuring the right to life and basic employment and serious about addressing disparity.

The NREG could make politicians/bureaucrats more accountable. In many ways the shrill concern about corruption and waste is useful, even if it is not entirely without hypocrisy has anyone of these nay-sayers sounded as catatonic about the innumerable scams and cooperative bank scandals that have beset the economy? The sheer size of the outlay involved 8212; and it is huge, even though projections don8217;t often match the exaggerated figures being trotted out by sceptics 8212; should change the way we do our social welfare. Those gaps between allocation and utilisation, those mismatches between Central and state action, that non-compliance with guidelines, that shoddy coordination of concerned agencies, those lazy timelines and even lazier accounting8230; well, we can8217;t afford them any longer.

Since the Centre will be very much in the picture, the NREG could also help address the chronic governance-deficit in states like Bihar, where politicians are content to mobilise the poor for their political purposes, but deliver only the barest of minimum ofservices to them.

NREG could deepen democracy by making beneficiaries claim ownership of it. Much has been said about the synergy between the right to information and the right to basic employment. What is distinct about the NREG is that it is a justiciable right, unlike anti-poverty schemes like the Swarna Jayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojna. This allows entitlements to become more concretised. Just as people learnt the value of their vote, they could now learn the value of their right to 100 days of guaranteed employment every year. They could learn to defend this right and bring those who attempt to deprive them of it, to justice. Just as the Right to Information movement in Rajasthan made even illiterate women utter the words 8220;mera hisaab8221;, so too they could now begin to say, 8220;Meri naukri, mere paise8221;.

The recent debate on the NREG had the voices of all our best qualified economists. But it was essentially uninformed because it did not reflect the thoughts and experiences of those who most stand to benefit from it. This too could change soon, as the forgotten people begin to articulate their concerns more effectively.

The NREG could change the status of the rural woman. Its emphasis on female employment is a crucial one. Studies like the National Family Health Survey 2 show how critical the earnings of a woman are to her family and her children, and how this, in turn, is a vital factor in the woman8217;s own social and health status. Malnutrition in children 8212; 46 per cent of Indian children are underweight 8212; is crucially linked with the mother8217;s health status. But given the volatility of agricultural employment, large numbers of women in the country are without gainful employment. In such a scenario the NREG 8212; even if it will benefit only one member in a family 8212; could prove nothing short of a lifeline.

NREG could change the face of rural India. Rural employment, according to NSS data, grew at an annual rate of 0.58 per cent in the second half of the 8217;90s. This, as several economists pointed out, is much less than the rate of growth of the rural population. Not just that, the diversification of rural labour has been sluggish. Non-agricultural labour accounted for a sixth of the rural workforce in the mid-seventies; by the time the 21th century came along, it accounted for a quarter of the workforce. But this expansion is clearly insufficient. The NREG could make a difference here.

Note, the term used consistently is 8220;could8221;. Of course, the NREG could fail. Of course, it could create corruption on an unprecedented scale and generate monstrous waste. But it is the country8217;s interests to stop talking about corruption and waste, and ensure the conditions that would minimise this possibility. What we need is an Employment Guarantee Shield.

Actually we are talking about growth and reform here, but there is no such thing as ethics-free reform as Amartya Sen reminded in a recent lecture: 8220;Development cannot be seen merely in terms of the enhancement of inanimate objects of convenience, such as merely raising GNP8230;Its value must depend on what the size, composition and nature of that growth do to the lives and freedoms of people.8221;