Back in 2005, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), now called Mahatma Gandhi NREGS or MGNREGS, was offered as a tool to liberate Dalits and weaker sections in rural India by giving them employment.
Five years down the line, a Union Ministry of Rural Development-sponsored investigation has found that the scheme has become “yet another instrument in the consolidation of the existing exploitative power structure”.
The investigation report, which became available on Wednesday, says the scheme was being arbitrarily run by gram pradhans with little involvement of gram sabhas.
Reservation for women and Scheduled Castes in panchayats had failed to serve its purpose because “women pradhans are proxied by their male relatives”, while “SC pradhans are dummies for ex-pradhan or other powerful landowners”, it said.
The investigation was conducted by a six-member team headed by retired IAS officer K B Saxena, a former secretary in the Union Rural Development Ministry. The team visited four districts of UP — Rae Bareli, Sultanpur, Pratapgarh and Allahabad — from May 4 to May 10 to “investigate complaints and oversee implementation of the scheme.
While Rae Bareli is Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s Lok Sabha constituency, Sultanpur includes Rahul Gandhi’s constituency Amethi. Sources said the team was sent on Rahul’s request. Both Rahul and Sonia had expressed unhappiness with its implementation.
While the Centre’s response was not immediately available, UP Secretary of Rural Development Manoj Kumar Singh said it was “a political report”. He said they were aware of some of the shortcomings, such as the need for inclusion of weaker sections and women in the scheme, and had already taken necessary action. In its first para, the 126-page report says the MGNREGS was expected to liberate Dalits and other weaker sections from the “oppressive grip” of the land-owning upper castes, “but the capture of Panchayati Raj institutions by the landed elite and indifferent implementation of the programme have defeated this objective.”