What's in NREGA for the middle class

Despite its seminal success in beginning a process of addressing issues of poverty, starvation and empowering the poor, the MGNREGA needed a general election to breathe life into it. However, the disproportionate influence of the middle class on social sector policy has led to the same set of pre-election prejudices resurfacing."What use is the MGNREGA to the economy at large?" asksthe businessman, one eye fixed apprehensively on the share market. Meanwhile,the policy maker "crunches figures" to see whether the 8 ½ can become nineor 10 this year, and sundry young people aspire to pass "CAT" to settleabroad?We have even forgotten how rural markets in India survivedthe global economic downturn. In Rajasthan, even cynical politicians andadministrators admit that the drought of 2009 passed off without huge ruralunrest due to MGNREGA. We have become so short-sighted that we think thatanything we do not immediately and directly benefit from must be awaste.It is important to address the three biggest issues raised todiscredit the act — human resources, corruption, and productive assets.MGNREGA has given people, the largest economic resource in ourcountry, some amount of work, and plenty of dignity. In state after state,workers have testified that guaranteed employment has enabled them to fight manybattles including a system of oppression where they have no choice but toacquiesce to forced labour, indebtedness and the indignity of having to beg forsurvival. The unemployed are becoming workers, and workers are raising issues ofcitizenship.There is no doubt that corruption threatens andundermines the MGNREGA, but it is being fought with courage and determination bysome of the most disadvantaged people in our country. In fact, it has givenbirth to more anti-corruption activists than any other programme in India. Inguaranteeing provisions for transparency and accountability, it has empoweredthe ordinary worker to question and demand answers from the local powerstructure. Our battles against corruption in the patently wasteful CommonwealthGames could greatly benefit by learning from the anti-corruption struggles ofMGNREGA workers. We might then figure out how to fight the corruption thatpermeates every part of our political and administrativestructure.And what about assets? The popular image of MGNREGA is ofmillions of people across the country busy digging holes and filling them up.Several-thousand water harvesting structures have been built in the most ecofriendly manner possible, rural roads have connected some of the poorest, mostinaccessible hamlets, millions of dalits, land allottees and BPL families haveconverted wasteland into productive plots through MGNREGAwork.Without meaningful evaluation of the utility of the assetscreated, policy makers make assertions about useless work. If it benefits therich, an asset is called infrastructure. If it is of use to the poor, it is thedole. Undoubtedly, all of this could have been done better, more efficiently,with better planning and implementation. If only the policy makers and theimplementation agencies had carried out this mandate, including the initiationof a bottom-up effort to appropriately expand the category of permissibleworks.Why can't the fantastically gifted folk artists and singersbecome music tutors for a hundred days a year at primary schools in their areainstead of digging sand in the desert?Can the differently-abled notbe encouraged to do work appropriate to their abilities, as long as they engagein "productive employment at minimum wages"?Can parts of the countrywith a dearth of public land, not be allowed to design and evolve their own setof appropriate works?The truth is that the failures of the MGNREGAare the handiwork of the powerful elite and an entrenched self-servingbureaucracy. Workers are paying the price and landmark legislation is beingundermined through the failure of policy makers and administrators to do theirjob. Finally the country will pay the price in fundamental, basicways.Aruna Roy is a member of the National Advisory Council