NATIONWIDE EVALUATION OF THE FLAGSHIP PROGRAMME OF MAHATMA GANDHI NATIONAL RURAL EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE ACT (MGNREGA)

Transcription

1 A REPORT ON NATIONWIDE EVALUATION OF THE FLAGSHIP PROGRAMME OF MAHATMA GANDHI NATIONAL RURAL EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE ACT (MGNREGA) 0 Evaluating Agencies Academy of Management Studies; Awadh Research Foundation; GFK Mode Pvt. Ltd.; Midstream Marketing & Research Pvt. Ltd.; Mott MacDonald Pvt. Ltd. Sponsored by dal Agency Economic and Monitoring Wing, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India Krishi Bhavan, New Delhi Political & Social Research Unit TNS India Private Limited 7 th Floor, DLF Corporate Park DLF City, Phase-, Gurgaon

2 Study Team dal Agency - TNS India Mr. Mohd. Aariz Qureshi, Ms. Anjum Jamal and Mr. Avijit Bhargarh Evaluating Agencies Academy of Management Studies (AMS)- Shri. GD Upreti Awadh Research Foundation- Shri Anupam Chatterjee GFK Mode- Dr. Urmil Dosaj Midstream Marketing and Research Pvt Ltd.- Shri Sanjay Pandey Mott McDonald Pvt Ltd- Ms. Nabaneeta Rudra

3 Contents Executive Summary - CHAPTER INTRODUCTION. Background of the MGNREGA Rationale of the study.... Research Objectives.... Scope of Work.... Approach and Methodology....6 Coverage Research Tools Limitations... 8 CHAPTER PHYSICAL AND FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF THE STATES. The National Scenario... 9 CHAPTER EMPLOYMENT POTENTIAL OF THE PROGRAMME. Profile of the listed households Occupation of Chief Wage Earner of Household Number of Households which sought employment in the last three years Average number of days of employment under MGNREGA in a year Unemployment allowance....6 Qualitative Findings... CHAPTER GENERAL PROFILE. Economic Categorization of the Households.... Religion and caste.... Family size.... Educational profile of the family members.... Occupational profile of the registered job card members....6 Number of other family members worked in MGNREGA Quality of Life Access to land Expenditure on major heads... 8

4 CHAPTER AWARENESS ABOUT MGNREGA AMONG VARIOUS STAKEHOLDERS. Awareness among beneficiaries and other main stakeholders about the scheme provisions Awareness about various provisions of MGNREGA among Education and Occupation Groups... CHAPTER 6 REGISTRATION OF JOB CARDS 6. First Job Card Made Process of Registration for Job Cards Time taken to issue the job cards Custodian of the Job Cards Issuance of Duplicate Job Cards... 9 CHAPTER 7 EMPLOYMENT 7. Demand of Work Time taken to get the last employment Reasons for not getting work on time Reasons for not demanding work under MGNREGA Households got the employment without demanding the work Facilities on the Worksite Ownership of Work Equipment General information about the last three works CHAPTER 8 WAGES AND TRANSACTIONS 8. Maintenance of Attendance Unemployment Allowance Travel allowance Wages Bank Accounts Modes of Bank payment transfer Time taken to receive the wages Equal wages to Men and Women CHAPTER 9 IMPACT OF MGNREGA 9. Impact on Employment and Migration Perception about Created Assets Impact on Marginalized sections... 8

5 9. Food Security Impact on Women Impact on Agriculture Use of Earned Money Preference of MGNREGA Work Perception of different stakeholders about various socio-economic changes that happened due to MGNREGA... 9 CHAPTER 0 INDIVIDUAL BENEFICIARIES 0. Profile of the Individual Beneficiaries Process of Application Type of Benefits under the Programme Impact of MGNREGA... 0 CHAPTER OTHER STAKEHOLDERS. General Profile of Mates Gram Rozgar Sahayak (GRS) Training of Mate and GRS.... Sarpanch or other members of Gram Panchayat.... Block Programme Officer....6 District Programme Coordinator... 6 CHAPTER ASSETS AND WORKS. Types of Works Status of Work Executing agencies.... Wage Material Ratio.... Involvement of Women....6 Maintenance of Records... CHAPTER PLANNING, TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY. Planning Employment Guarantee Day Monitoring.... Grievance Redressal.... Social Audits... 6 CHAPTER RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

6 ANNEXURES ANNEXURE. Analysis Tables ANNEXURE. Details of Field Agencies and states they have covered ANNEXURE. Research Design ANNEXURE. List of sampled districts ANNEXURE. Details of Data Quality Monitoring ANNEXURE 6. te on Awareness Score, Wealth Index & Ranking of States ANNEXURE 7. Research Tools

7 Figures, Tables and Maps Chapter Pages Table.: States and Zones Table.: State-wise achieved sample size 6 Chapter Table.: Physical and Financial performance of the programme during the reference period 9 Figure.: Percentage of works completed in FY: 0- Figure.: Percentage of person days generated among SCs & STs in 0- Figure.: Average person- days per employed household Figure.: Person days generated for Women in FY 0- (in %) Table.: Percentage of person days generated among SCs & STs Figure.: Average person- days per employed household Figure.6- Financial performance during the reference period (in Crore Rupees) Figure.7: Expenditure on unskilled wages to total expenditure (in %) Chapter Figure.: State wise proportion of BPL & OTHER households among listed households 7 Figure.: Labour demand by occupation groups 9 Figure.a: Labour demand by economic groups 9 Figure.b: Labour Demand by Economic & Occupation Group wise 0 Chapter : Table.: Categorization of sampled households as per the wealth ranking Figure.: Social and Religious Groups Figure.: Ownership of land 8 Chapter : Figure.: Source of information about various MGNREGA provisions 0 Figure.: Awareness of households about various provisions of MGNREGA Table.: Awareness among various stakeholders Map.: Households awareness about various provisions of MGNREGA Map.: GPs awareness about various provisions of MGNREGA Figure.: Awareness score by education Figure.: Awareness score by occupation Figure.: Awareness Score of various Groups Chapter 6: Figure 6.: Year wise distribution of Job Cards made Figure 6.: Mode of Application 6 Figure 6.: Time taken to issue a Job Card by State 7 Figure 6.: Time taken to receive job cards by various groups (in %) 8 Figure 6.: Custodian of Job Cards (in %) 8 Table 6.: Custody of Job cards (various groups, in percentage) 9 Chapter 7: Figure 7.: Mode of Application (in %) 6 Map 7.: Proportion of HHs demanded MGNREGA work 6 Map 7.: Received signed and dated receipt of demanded work 6 Table 7.: Number of households (falling under different groups of wealth) demanded employment 6 Table 7.: Demand of work analysed across the groups 6 Map 7.: Proportion of HHs got employment within days of demand 6 Figure 7.: Reasons for delay in getting work (in %) 6 Figure 7.: Reasons for not demanding work under MGNREGA (in %) 6 Map 7.: Proportion of HHs got employment without demanding work 66

8 Chapter 8: Figure 8.: Attendance maintenance on the work site (in %) 7 Table 8.: Distribution of various groups on the basis of signing for attendance 7 Figure 8.: Proportion of workers signed for their attendance (in %) 7 Figure 8.: Reasons for not checking Muster Rolls (in %) 7 Figure 8.: Reasons for declining the job offer (in %) 7 Figure 8.: Distribution of per day wage rates (in %) 7 Table 8.: Percentage of Households opened bank accounts - Group wise 76 Table 8.: Bank Account Name (Group wise, in percentage) 76 Map 8.: Proportion of households opened a new bank account for MGNREGA 77 Map 8.: Proportion of Bank Accounts opened in the name of female HH member 77 Figure 8.7: Problems faced in opening the bank accounts (in %) 78 Figure 8.8: Mode of payment of last work under MGNREGA 78 Figure 8.9: Verification at the time of cash payment 78 Figure 8.0: Average time taken to get the wage payment 79 Table 8.: Time taken to receive wages by different groups (in%) 80 Chapter 9: Figure 9.: Impact on Employment and Migration ( of days of employment wise) 8 Figure 9. (a)-status of migration for work (in %) 8 Figure 9.(b): Status of migration of households of various groups 8 Figure 9.: Duration of migration for work 8 Figure 9.: Perception about works / Created Assets 8 Figure 9.: Perception about Socio-economic Changes 8 Figure 9.6: Status of loan taken in last years 8 Figure 9.7: Status of loan repayment of those who have taken loan in last years 8 Figure 9.8: Status of loan taken before years 8 Figure 9.9: Status of loan repayment of those who have taken loan before years 8 Figure 9.0: Perception about impact on women (in %) 86 Figure 9.: Perception about impact on Agriculture at the village level (in %) 87 Figure 9.: Perception about Impact on agriculture at the household level 87 Figure 9.: Use of money earned under MGNREGA 88 Figure 9.: Preference of people between MGNREGA and n-mgnrega Works (in %) 89 Figure 9.: Top three reasons to prefer MGNREGA Works under different situations (in %) 90 Figure 9.6: MGNREGA & n-mgnrega works preference by Gender 90 Figure 9.7: Perception of different stakeholders viz a viz employment and migration (in %) 9 Figure 9.8: Perception of different stakeholders viz a viz works and assets under MGNREGA (in %) 9 Figure 9.9: Perception of different stakeholders about marginalised sections (in %) 9 Figure 9.0: Perception of different stakeholders viz a viz empowerment and development of women (in %) 9 Figure 9.: Perception of different stakeholders about water and land development indicators (in %) 9 Figure 9.: Impact at the household level -Perception of different stakeholders (in %) 96 Table 9.:Ranking of states on the basis of their performance under MGNREGA 98 Chapter 0: Table 0.: State wise distribution of Individual Beneficiaries 99

9 Figure 0.: Social & Religion wise distribution of Individual beneficiaries 00 Figure 0.: Age wise distribution of the individual beneficiaries (in %, N=6) 0 Figure 0.: Education wise distribution of individual beneficiaries (in%, N=6) 0 Table 0.: Individual beneficiary application details 0 Figure 0.: Problems faced to avail the benefits 0 Figure 0.: of beneficiaries paid Convenience charges (in %) 0 Table 0.: Amount of Convenience Fees paid by the beneficiaries 0 Figure 0.6: Types of benefits under MGNREGA individual beneficiaries scheme 0 Table 0.: Reasons for dissatisfaction for the work on Private Lands 0 Figure 0.7: Impact on Irrigation water 06 Figure 0.8: Impact on cropping Pattern 06 Figure 0.9: Food Security 07 Chapter : Figure.: Profile of Mates (in%, N= 06) 09 Figure.: Educational Profile of Mates (in %, N-06) 0 Figure.: Profile of GRS Figure.: Educational Profile of GRS (in %, N=06) Figure.: Proportion of Mates and GRS received training Figure.6: Components of Mate Kits Figure.7: Reasons for not demanding work as per GP members (in %, N=6) Chapter : Table.: Number and types of works taken up in the reference period 7 Map.: Types of works taken up under MGNREGA 9 Table.: Status of works taken up in the reference period 0 Figure.: Status of Works State wise Table.: Type of work by Executing Agency Table.: Wage material ratio in different types of works Figure.: Status of Village Records Figure.: Status of Registers at the Block Level Chapter : Figure.: Percentage of households of various groups attended Gram Sabha 8 Figure.: Proportion of stakeholders said that Employment Guarantee Day is organized Figure.: Employment Guarantee Day Frequency and Locations (in %) Figure.: Aspects of MGNREGA monitored by DPCs Figure.: Aspects of MGNREGA monitored by BPOs Figure.6: Grievance Redressal - whom do they approach first to complain Figure.7: Percentage of Households attended Social Audit (Group wise) 7

10 Acronyms. APL- Above Poverty Line. BPL- Below Poverty Line. BPO Block Programme Officer. DPC District Programme Coordinator. EA - Evaluating Agency 6. GP - Gram Panchayat 7. GRS Gram Rozgar Sahayak 8. MGNREGA- Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 9. NA- dal Agency 0. SECC- Socio-Economic and Caste Census. SC- Scheduled Castes. ST- Scheduled Tribes

11 Nationwide Evaluation of the Flagship Program of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) I. Introduction Executive Summary Amongst all the wage employment programmes planned and implemented for the livelihood security of the working population of rural India, MGNREGA is unique, as it is community based, demand driven and has a legal provision for providing 00 days of wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. The primary objective of the earlier wage employment programmes were to provide wage employment to the poor/vulnerable sections of population of the country, who for several reasons, were unable to get assimilated into the mainstream development process. Thus, with a view to eliminate the weaknesses of the previous wage employment generating programmes, the Government of India introduced Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in 00. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was notified on 7th September 00. The Act was notified in 00 rural districts in its first phase of implementation (with effect from February 006). It was extended to 0 additional districts in financial year All the remaining districts were notified with effect from April, 008. MGNREGA has covered the entire country with the exception of districts that have a hundred percent urban population. With its legal framework and rights-based approach, MGNREGA provides employment to those who demand it and is a paradigm shift from earlier programmes. MGNREGA is unlike other programmes in terms of its scale, architecture and thrust. It has an integrated natural resource management and livelihood generation perspective. The significant aspects of this paradigm shift are namely: i) MGNREGA provides statutory guarantee of wage employment, ii) It provides a rights-based framework for wage employment. Employment is dependent upon the worker exercising the choice and applying for registration, obtaining a Job Card, and seeking employment for the time and duration that the worker wants, iii) There is a -day time limit for fulfilling the legal guarantee of providing employment, iv) Legal mandate of providing employment in a time bound manner is underpinned by the provision of Unemployment Allowance, v) The Act is designed to offer an incentive structure to the States for providing employment as 90 percent of the cost for employment provided is borne by the Centre. There is a concomitant disincentive for not providing employment as the States then bear the double indemnity of unemployment and the cost of unemployment allowance, vi) Unlike earlier wage employment programmes that were allocation based, MGNREGA is demand driven. Resource transfer under MGNREGA is based on the demand for employment which in turn provides another critical incentive to States to leverage upon the Act to meet the employment needs of the poor, vii) MGNREGA has extensive inbuilt transparency safeguards through its laid out documents and processes, viii)the public delivery system has been made accountable, as it envisages an Annual Report on the outcomes of MGNREGA to be presented by the Central Government to the Parliament and to the Legislature by the State Government. Specifically, personnel

12 responsible for implementing the Act have been made legally responsible for delivering the guarantee under the Act. Rationale for the study- The programme has been operational since year 006 and was extended to the entire country in year 008. Till year 0-, the programme had distributed Rs.,,000 crores directly as wages and generated,8 crores of person days of employment across 6 lakhs works. During the XIth Plan period the Union Govt. released Rs.,,0 crores and total expenditure was Rs.,7,69 crores on MGNREGA (this includes State contributions). Despite huge expenditure and far reaching consequences of such an intervention in rural sector, no national level research was conducted to study it holistically. Thus, it was decided by the Ministry of Rural Development, to conduct a national level Evaluation of MGNREGA to study it in a holistic manner. In this study, all the aspects of programme implementation, perceived benefits from the programme and its impact on the lives of beneficiaries have been studied. Research Objectives: The main objective of the study was to assess how far the goals of livelihood security of the poor including the marginalized sections of the society like SCs, STs, Minorities, etc. have been achieved. Research Design For every district, a sample size of 0 households had been worked out. Fifteen percent or a minimum of districts - whichever is more were chosen from each state. Districts were selected on the basis of higher rural population. From each district, blocks and from each block 9 GPs were selected on the basis of utilized funds and number of completed works during 00- to 0-. For each of the sampled GP, SECC (Socio Economic & Caste Census) data of households were provided to Evaluating Agency and they listed 00 households in sampled village of GP. Of the 00 listed households, households were sampled based on availability of Job Card. While selecting the households, care was taken to have fair representation of SC, ST and Minority households. In addition to this from each sampled village, households who have received benefit under Individual household beneficiary of MGNREGA were also selected for interview. Scope of Work- The reference period for the current study was year 00-, year 0- and year 0- (three years).the study got delayed for some unavoidable reasons, so year 0- was also taken up in study frame. Broadly, the study covered 8 major states of the country and 0 sample districts in these states. This study was done through a network of Evaluating Agencies (EAs). A total of 0,89 households,, individual beneficiaries and,70 GPs, blocks and 0 districts were covered under this study. List of districts may be seen in Annexure-. The sample size achieved in the survey was slightly lower than the expected coverage. The study was supposed to cover 0 districts, 0 blocks,,77 GPs, 0,90 households and, individual beneficiary households.. This is because of the non-availability of required number of GPs with sufficient number of works undertaken under MGNREGA programme. States like Punjab, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Manipur and Goa did not provide any benefit to individual beneficiary under MGNREGA. Research Tools: A number of structured and semi structured research tools were used to capture information from various stakeholders of states, districts, blocks, villages and households. The tools were - Listing Format, Household Questionnaire, Individual MGNREGA Beneficiary Questionnaire, Mate Questionnaire, Gram Panchayat Questionnaire, Gramin Rozgar Sahayak (GRS) Questionnaire, Focus Group Discussion Guidelines, Block Programme

13 Officer Schedule, District Programme Coordinator Schedule and Employment Guarantee Commissioner Guidelines. II. Physical and Financial Performance of the Programme Being the largest public work programme, a lot has been expected from MGNREGA since its inception and thus it always remained in the limelight. About percent of the total population was receiving social security cover under this programme, as reported by the World Bank Group's report 'The State of Social Safety Nets 0. Physical Works- The number of works were taken up across the country keeping in mind the demand by the local people and needs of the area. It has been observed that maximum works were taken up in the category of Water Conservation followed by Rural Connectivity. In the reference period, 8 percent, 60 percent and 6 percent works were taken up in the category of Water Conservation in the years 00-0, 0-0 and 0-0 respectively. This focus on water and land development (which was also been taken up) may increase the land productivity in the future and people may move from wage employment to sustainable employment in their villages. The work completed ratio has shown a drastic decline from year 00- to year 0-. The work completed ratio of three reference years of 00-, 0- and 0- was 0.89 percent,. percent and. percent respectively. The stress has been laid in the guidelines that all the required feasibility assessment of the selected/ approved works should be carried out in advance. Still, at times, the works were not found to be appropriate for the area and it got abandoned in between due to technical problems. Sameeksha which is an Anthology of Research Studies on MGNREGA also quotes that the completion rate of works, just as in case of quality of assets, is dependent on district / region specific implementation of the Scheme and is affected by poor planning, lack of technical support, irregular flow of funds and delayed payments. Tripura presents a very good record of completing the works in year 0-, followed by Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Manipur. Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh show a very low percentage on this aspect. Employment- This programme is expected to provide employment to all needy and marginalized sections of the society. States had made their own mechanisms to mobilize marginalized sections and provide them with work opportunities. MGNREGA, on an average, provides annual employment to around crore households every year which is around 0 percent of the total rural households in the country. Since its inception, MGNREGA has generated,7 crore person-days of employment till December, 0. Person Days-Women: The participation of women as work force was more than the obligatory guidelines of percent. Approximately, 9 percent of the workforce was women during the reference period. In year 0-, person-days generated for women were more than that of men at the national level, which implies that it was preferred more by women, probably because of the proximity of work sites to their homes. But, when analysed state wise, the scene is not same across all the states. Percentage of Women work days varied from 0 percent to 9 percent, which was quite a large variation. In Kerala 9 percent of the person days were generated by women workers. Goa and Tamil Nadu stand second and third place, respectively, on this aspect. The lowest number of women person days was generated in Uttar Pradesh. Average Person Days per employed Household- National average for the years 00-, 0- and 0- was 7, and 6. days of employment per household. The

14 entitlement was of 00 days, which was maximum that one household can get in a year. In FY 0-, Mizoram and Tripura have provided 87.8 and 87.0 person days per household respectively and at the same time, Goa has provided just.6 days of average work to the employed households. Higher than average person days generated in the states of Tripura and Mizoram shows that there is high demand of work and these states have implemented it quite seriously. Financial Performance- It may be observed from the Table. and Figure.6, presenting the financial data, that despite of the demand of the programme, there has not been 00 percent utilization of the available funds in these years. The maximum utilization was in the year 0-, and that was to the tune of 88 percent only. The approved ratio for wage and material is 60:0. This ratio was observed across all the years. Approximately, 68. percent of the expenditure in these three years was on wages. III. Employment Potential of the Programme In total,,7,89 households were listed across the country. Out of this,.9 percent belonged to Other Backward Classes (OBCs),.7 percent belonged to Scheduled castes and 0.7 percent belonged to Scheduled Tribes. The listing data represents the demographic profile of the states to a large extent. As per the economic status of the listed households,.7 percent were BPL and rest 6. percent were APL. In Punjab, out of the total listed households only 8. percent were BPL, whereas in Karnataka 9 out of 0 listed households were BPL. Occupation of Chief Wage Earner of Household in most of the cases comes under Unskilled Labour (.7 percent) followed by cultivators (.9 percent). In the state of Maharashtra and Rajasthan, the chief wage earners were mainly cultivators (Maharashtra: percent and Rajasthan:.8 percent). In Gujarat, the CWE were either labor- skilled (9. percent) and unskilled (7. percent) or cultivators (.7 percent). Number of Households sought employment in the last three years- Just 60. percent of the listed households had demanded work under the programme, though any person willing to work can demand. In Meghalaya, Manipur and Nagaland, the entire listed sample had demanded work, whereas in Goa, just. percent of the listed population had demanded work. When demand of work was analyzed across the occupations of the chief wage earner, it was observed that across all the occupational groups people had demanded work. But, maximum number of people belonged to labour category- both skilled and unskilled. This data when further disaggregated as per economic classification (BPL/Other households) revealed that more BPL households (7.7 percent) had demanded work than Other households (6.8 percent). As far as supply side of the employment under MGNREGA is concerned, all the states had made efforts to provide employment to the people who demanded work which is very well reflected in the figures of national average of 99. percent. The average for BPL and Other households for the same was 99.7 percent and 98.9 percent respectively. It may be seen in the Figure., that in the states of rth Eastern part of India, 00 percent of the listed households demanded employment and they all were provided with employment opportunities also. Households not having BPL card are considered as APL or Households without BPL card

15 Average number of days of employment under MGNREGA in a year: The performance of MGNREGA in terms of full realization of the entitled 00 days of work per year could be considered abysmally low. The data reveals that only.8 percent received employment for, an average of, more than 80 days while only 7.9 percent received, on an average, 6-80 days of work. Just more than 0 percent got employment for, an average, of - 60 days. There were 6 percent of the households who got employment for less than 0 days. In Tripura, 76. percent households worked for more than 80 days and another. percent worked for 6-80 days. Therefore, average number of employment days received by households in Tripura stood quite high at 8.7 percent compared to national average of. percent. In Meghalaya, 90.7 percent of households had worked for less than 0 days. This need to be explored further that though the state were prompt enough to provide employment to all the demanding households, but the number of days of work was very low. This cannot be termed as a relief measure for the needy people. Similarly, the states of Nagaland and Manipur did not provide sufficient number of employment days. Unemployment allowance- Almost all, who had demanded work, had obtained it under the MGNREGA programme. There were just 90 households out of,6,86 (demanded work), who did not get employment. Out of these 90, just got unemployment allowance. It also emerged from the FGDs and informal discussions with the villagers that written request was not taken for the demand, as it binds state government for unemployment allowance. Therefore, whenever fund came, only then, people were called for work and written demands were taken.. The system of demand driven work was operational only in Andhra Pradesh. IV. General Profile of the sampled households Out of the total 0,89 sampled households in 8 states, 70.9 percent households belonged to BPL category (as told by the respondents themselves). Of 8 states, states had more than 7 percent of the sampled households under BPL category. It is pertinent to note that West Bengal had the highest percentage (98.8 percent) of the sampled household under BPL category while Punjab had four out of five sampled household under Other category followed by Himachal Pradesh where three out of five households belonged to Others category. To understand more deeply the economic status of the surveyed households, a Wealth Index was developed using standard indicators. The reason of doing this analysis and the methodology adopted to develop this wealth index may be seen at Annexure 6. On the basis of this Wealth Index, households were arranged in order and divided into quintiles at the national level & distributed among all the different states to know the distribution of Economic Status State wise. Finally, households having scores of wealth index from 0.00 to 0.0, 0. to 0.80 and 0.8 to.0 were named as Low, Middle and High Income groups respectively. Households scored wealth index between 0.00 to 0.0 have been considered as poor households because they belong to lowest economic strata of Wealth Index and these households should ideally be having BPL card. Similarly, households scored wealth index between 0.8 to.0 have been considered as rich or high income group households because they belong to highest economic strata of Wealth Index and ideally they should not have BPL card. These households were further bifurcated into BPL and Other Households on the basis of the availability of BPL cards. Those who had BPL cards were categorized as BPL households and those who did not have BPL cards were considered as Other Households. Finally, these two parameters wealth index and BPL status, households were distributed in six groups as depicted in subsequent table below.

16 Categorization of sampled households as per the wealth ranking Low Income Group Middle Income Group High Income Group BPL Other HH BPL Other HH BPL Other HH Total % 8.0% 7.0%.80%.90% 8.0% 00.00% It is evident from the above analysis that out of the total households covered, only.90 percent were the real BPL and they were in possession of BPL card also while remaining 90.9 percent were either not Poor but having BPL card or poor and not having any BPL card. It was observed from the household profile of the sampled households that the family size was small. As per Census of India Report, during the decade of year 00-0, the mean size of the households registered a substantial decline from. to.9. At all India level, of the total households, the family size of nearly 6 percent households were less than members, another percent households were having between to 8 members and the rest households were having more than 8 members. The educational profile of the household members revealed that about 7 percent household members were illiterates and another.6 percent were literate without any formal education. Though the programme is open to any adult member willing to work, but it was found from the survey that only those persons sought employment under this programme who worked as labour. In acute conditions like drought, flood, emergency situations, cultivators (6 percent of the sample) also worked under MGNREGA. Access to land-data revealed that about percent of the sampled households have access to land; this shows that either the size of the land was small or the land they had was not useful for cultivation. This is one of the reasons for people to seek employment under MGNREGA. It was observed that only 9. percent of the sampled Other Households and. percent of sampled BPL households had access to the land. Unlike other programmes, MGNREGA catered to both BPL and Other population. It provided benefit to Other Households also depending on those who indicated their willingness. Expenditure on major heads- It was considered important to know the expenditure pattern of the households, who worked in MGNREGA. It was observed that they spent more money on education and health. One household, on an average, had spent approximately Rs.,6 in last one year on health followed by Rs.,80 on education. When state-wise expenditure pattern was analyzed, it emerged that households of Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand spent maximum among all the states on health in last one year. The households of J&K spent maximum on education (average of Rs.,8 in a year) while households in Gujarat spent maximum on social events. (Tables in Annexure ). V. Awareness about MGNREGA among different stakeholders It may be seen from the data on awareness that people became aware about this programme through various sources like Gram Sabhas, Sarpanchs, Radio/ TV, GRS and friends and relatives of people. It may also be noted that in the states of West Bengal, 6

17 Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand, Gram Sabha played a limited role in information dissemination. This may be due to the non-effectiveness of Gram Sabhas. It was reported during FGDs that in many cases, Sarpanch passes the information to its affiliated members only. The awareness score given to different stakeholders indicated that awareness about MGNREGA provisions was highest among BPOs (.0), followed by Mate (.8), GP members (.7), individual MGNREGA beneficiaries (.) and households (0.). The awareness is little more in female headed households than male headed households. When awareness scores were analysed among religious groups, it was found that minority households (which include all other than Hindus) have more awareness than Hindu households. Among all the groups (Social group, Religious group and group of male & female headed households) analysed, ST households have maximum and SC households have the minimum awareness. VI. Registration of Job Cards The job cards of most of the households (9 percent) were made before the year 00. The job cards were generally made hassle free except for few cases, where they had to pay convenience charges, and cards were issued generally between 7- days. It was gathered that 89.7 percent of households had job cards in their custody at the time of survey. Among religious groups, more Hindu households had cards in their possession than minority households. The female headed households were more in possession of the job card than male headed households. Around 6 percent households reported that the job card was with Sarpanch and one percent (i.e. 7 households) said that their job card was with GRS for updating. VII. Employment It was also observed in many cases and in many areas that Gram Panchayats or GRS did not give written receipts against demand to avoid unemployment allowance. When people demand work, work is started after few days (or after days) but no unemployment allowance is given. At all India level, 79. percent demanded work under MGNREGA and only. percent of them received dated receipt of their application and rest were given verbal assurances. It was gathered from the findings of the survey that around 86 percent of the households got their last employment within days. About.8 percent households got after days, which defeated the purpose of the programme. The sampled households were categorized into Low, Middle and High Income groups in the Section. and further studied in respect to the demand for employment. It was observed that 809 (0 percent) households fall under low income group. Ideally, BPL cards should have been made of all these households, but there were 7 households (about 8. percent of the total sample), which did not have BPL cards. Of these 7 households, 8 households (6. percent of the total sample households) even applied for MGNREGA work, which means that they were in real need and MGNREGA seemed to them as a ray of hope. Please refer to the Table 7. in the chapter VII. On the other hand, there were 807 households (another 0 percent of total sample households) which fall under high income group. Of them, 77 (about percent of total sample) were having BPL cards and 6 (8. percent of total sample) were 7

18 not having BPL cards. Of these Other households of upper income group, 06 (6. percent of the total sample households) demanded for work and from BPL upper households, 9 (8.8 percent of total BPL households) demanded for work. Among religious groups, 69 percent of minority households and about 8 percent of Hindu households had demanded work. Similarly when analysed among caste groups, about 66 percent Scheduled Tribes households had demanded work (Please refer table 7.). MGNREGA has been there for all the willing families, whether they are BPL or belong to any group. Everyone has an easy access to the programme, as it is being implemented at the village level. Basic Facilities on work site- It is mentioned in the guidelines of the MGNREGA that basic facilities should be provided to the workers at the worksite. There should be provisions for drinking water, first aid, shade and crèche/ Aaya/ care taker. At all India level, 87. percent respondents said that drinking water was available on the site, percent respondents reported about availability of first aid kits on the site, 9 percent of the households reported to have shades on the worksite. It was observed that, at all India level, nearly / th of the respondents said that crèche facility was available on the worksite. In J&K, respondents reportedly did not or rarely receive any such facilities on the site. Work equipment - It was found that 86 percent of the household respondent carried tools like spade, axe, pick, etc., along for the work. Those without any tools borrowed from the Sarpanch/ GRS/ or from any other source and few (about percent) had to pay some user charges ranging from Rs. to Rs.0. General information about the last three works- Majority of the respondents of the households worked in the works related to Rural Connectivity and Water Conservation. Though the card was made for the entire adult members willing to work under the programme, yet, one or two persons only, reportedly, worked from each of the households. In 6 percent of the sampled households, only one person had gone to work and in another 0 percent of the households, two persons had gone to work during their last three works. It came out from the survey that timings of the works were not limited to the lean period of the area. It was as and when funds arrived or need arose. The onset of works was spread across the year. Assets- About.7 percent households said that the works in which they had worked was of good quality, about 8 percent households said that works were of very good quality and just 9 percent said that works were of excellent quality. Very few people opined that works in which they had worked was of poor quality. About percent of the households said that assets created under MGNREGA were useful and percent respondents said that the created assets were useful to some extent. The works they had worked were mostly completed, and few were abandoned and ongoing. About 96.6 percent respondents said that no contractors were involved in the MGNREGA works, in which they had worked. Employment during Peak and Lean period of the year - The sampled households had got wage employment in lean period from both -MGNREGA and private works, and the contribution of MGNREGA was approximately to the tune of 9 percent. Among the total work-days generated under MGNREGA works (of both peak and lean season), about fifty percent (9.7 percent) were generated in lean period. Which means half (0. percent) of the work days were generated in peak period. So, the provision of employment in 8

19 lean period was somehow not strictly adhered to. There was not much difference in the wages in peak and lean periods. It was, in fact, more or less the same. VIII. Wages and Transactions In the survey, it was found that attendance was maintained on the worksite in different formats. At all India level, 6 percent respondents reported that attendance was maintained on attendance register, another 7 percent reported that muster roll was used to record the attendance and 6 percent of the households did say that the attendance was registered on a plain white paper. The state of Andhra Pradesh should be appreciated for maintaining attendance directly on the muster rolls. When confirmed about the signing of attendance, at all India level, about 70 percent respondents reported that they always signed for their attendance, while 8.8 percent have signed sometimes and nearly /0 th have never signed for their attendance. It was also noted that 76. percent of minority households and 68. percent Hindu households have always signed for their attendance. Among caste groups, ST households (76. percent) have signed more than the national average. Female headed households (7. percent) have always signed more than the male headed households (69. percent). In MGNREGA, beneficiaries are given this provision that they can check the muster rolls, if they wish to. Still, just about percent of the sampled households confirmed that they had checked the muster rolls. Rest did not check as most of them were illiterate and could not understand it. The muster roll was not provided for checking the details to some beneficiaries. It was observed that there were very few households (0.8 percent of 78 eligible households), who received unemployment allowance. There were, (8.6 percent) respondent households, who had to travel more than kms for the MGNREGA work. Out of these,,7 ( percent) got additional wages. Of those who travelled far and did not got the additional wages; majority said that they were not aware of this provision while some reported that even the Panchayat was not aware of this. It was seen from the survey findings that wage slips are not given to all the workers. Just 0.8 percent of the workers had received it in the last year while rest did not. Since all the states are supposed to frame their wage rates according to their state labour laws, therefore, wage rates also varied from state to state. But, maximum (0.6 percent) people got it in the range of Rs.6-0 per day; another 9 percent got average wages in the range of Rs.- Rs.00. The wage rates seemed to be higher in the states of Haryana, Goa and Manipur, Punjab and Kerala. Under MGNREGA, stress was laid on transferring payments through bank accounts. Therefore, about 90 percent (of 0,06 households) of the respondents opened new bank accounts (refer Map 8. for state wise details) after the onset of this programme. 8.6 percent SC households and 87. percent minority households had opened their bank accounts, which is less than All India figure of 90 percent. Other castes have percentage more than national average of opening new bank accounts. Usually these accounts were opened in the name of the male member of the households. In about 7 percent of the cases (of 60 households who opened accounts), joint accounts were opened and in another percent of the cases, accounts were opened in the name of the female member of the households (refer Map 8. for state wise details). The findings were found similar when analysed religion wise and caste wise. All these groups have percentage less than national average which means accounts are less in the names of the women of the house. But when female headed households were questioned, it was found that accounts were in women s 9

20 name in just 6 percent of the cases, 0 percent had accounts in name of males and another percent had joint accounts. In Kerala, maximum number of accounts was opened in the name of female while in rest of the states, accounts were opened more in the names of males. The payments are generally made either through bank accounts or through post office accounts across the states. In some cases (.7 percent), it was provided in cash. It was found that the cash was given with proper verification of the genuine worker. Majority of the cash payment was made by banking correspondents through bio-markers, nearly / th of the cash payment was given after verification of signatures and in rest of the cases, cash payment was given in presence of GP members. The mode of payment was found similar across the religious and caste groups. At all India about percent of households, reportedly, received wages within weeks and another 6 percent received in three weeks. It is to be noted that there were 9. percent households, who had received the wages in more than a month s time. It may further be noted that 68 percent of minority households and ST households have got their payment within two months, which is quite higher than the national average. The situation among SC households and other castes is below than the national average. About 9 percent of the households claimed that men and women received equal wages, which may be due to the concept of payment linked to the amount of work done. IX. Impact of the programme Three out of households (6 percent) reported that the programme had a strong positive impact in increasing the wage rate and 66 percent reported it provided them with employment opportunities. Even other stakeholders namely Mate, GRS, concerned officials of GP, Block and District also perceived that MGNREGA improved employment opportunities for the rural people during lean season. The block and district level officials carried more positive view of the programme than the household beneficiary. The household beneficiaries felt that programme was not very effective in stopping seasonal migration. Just 6 percent of the sampled households felt that it reduced seasonal migration. But, Block programme officers held contradictory opinion as 7 percent of the Block officials expressed that it helped in reducing seasonal migration. Even many district officials thought in that manner. More than half of Mate, GRS and GP officials thought that it helped in reducing migration. The impact of migration was studied on sampled households in detail. Earlier, members of 0. percent households used to migrate in the lean agriculture season and after MGNREGA,. percent households have stopped migrating. These households were getting employment opportunities in or around their villages at satisfactory wage rates, therefore they were not choosing to migrate. The difference in reduction of migration from 0. percent to 7. percent is statistically significant at 99 percent level of confidence. Earlier members of.7 percent households used to migrate for longer duration ranging from three to six months, but now members of only 6 percent households migrate for such a long duration. The increase in number of people staying for two months has increased probably, because people are staying for lesser duration now. They were earlier staying for more than three months and now are staying for two months. The Figure 9. depicts the trend clearly. Differences observed between migration at present (now) and earlier migration are statistical significant at 99 percent confidence interval. It may be 0

21 further inferred from the data that MGNREGA has not been able to check or impact migration in households belonging to minorities and scheduled tribes to a great extent as their demand for work was also less in comparison to other communities. There was a minor reduction in migration status of scheduled castes, now.6 percent less households migrate during the lean season. About 9 percent of the district and block level officials felt that created assets were useful for the community and about / rd of GP, Mates and GRS felt that assets were useful. In contrast to this, just about 9 percent of the households thought that created assets were useful and of good quality. 9 percent of the block officials felt that MGNREGA was able to develop approachable roads but percent households didnot share the same vioew.. More than half of the stakeholders felt that availability of drinking water improved in the villages. This programme provided employment mostly within the villages or its near-by areas. It was providing works to the needy people and thus, the marginalized sections of the society were getting benefits from it. More than half of the people perceived that it provided employment opportunities for them, as a result of which many were able to reduce their family debts. One of the objectives of the programme was to provide food security to the families at large, but 66 percent of the families thought that MGNREGA was not been able to provide such security. When we compared the opinion of those who got, more and less, number of days of employment, then there was a significant difference in opinion. About 60 percent of families who worked less and 7 percent of those who worked more felt that food security was not being provided by this programme. When data was analysed for the sampled households,. percent households were found to be impacted by the programme in terms of availability of food during lean season. These were the households who did not have sufficient food supply earlier but with the help of these MGNREGA works they had sufficient food to manage their families. Strangely, 70-7 percent of block and district officials thought that households were getting sufficient food in lean period. The impact of MGNREGA was studied on loans and its repayments rigorously and it was found that 8. percent of the sampled households did not take any loan in the last three years. The credit may be given to the programme, as it was able to provide some respite during hard times. But, 8. percent families had to take loan to meet their needs. It may be further seen that with the help of MGNREGA earnings, these households were able to repay the loan also. There were about 0 percent of families who repaid the total loan and another percent repaid more than 7 percent of their loan. MGNREGA was able to help about percent of the households to repay the old loans taken three years back. People perceived that there was some positive impact on women from this programme. They were getting employment in the village, which was giving them wages equal to men. They were, reportedly, becoming confident and more financially independent. This change in approach to work, like stress on output rather than on timings and making worksite more friendly, gave them confidence to undertake the works and do justice to it. People perceived that surface water of the village has improved due to various works taken up under MGNREGA. Many people felt that ground water has also improved to some extent. But, there seemed to be not very satisfactory improvement in irrigated land, increase in agricultural production and availability of fodder at the village level. The maximum a household can earn from MGNREGA was around Rs in a year (computed at the rate of Rs.0 per day for 00 days Rs.0 per day for 00 days). This was in addition to what they usually earned in a year. It was observed that they generally used this money

22 for Food/Household consumption (9.6 percent), buy clothes (88.8 percent) or on health expenditure of the family members (8. percent). MGNREGA works were preferred by the respondents when given an imaginary situation to decide between MGNREGA and non- MGNREGA works (private) because of better wages and flexible timings. So, MGNREGA was available for all the willing families, irrespective of their economic categorization. MGNREGA has therefore served the needy and willing families appropriately. Individual Beneficiaries,6 individual beneficiaries were covered in states. There were difficulties in finding individual beneficiaries as Sarpanch was generally not aware about them. Only GRS knew about them. The age profile of the beneficiaries reflects that maximum people (60.7 percent) took benefit in the age group of 6- years. Most of the beneficiaries did not face any problem in availing the benefit. About / th of the respondents reported that they had to approach several times and another 6 percent said that they faced problems because fellow villagers were not ready to work on their land. Another three percent said that some commission was sought from them to avail the benefit. In five states, beneficiaries availed benefits without any hassles. The maximum number of beneficiaries (6. percent) paid commission in the state of West Bengal, followed by Andhra Pradesh (.6 percent) and Himachal Pradesh (9. percent). About /0 th beneficiaries paid convenience charges in the range of 00 to 000 and another percent paid more than Rs.000. At the all India level, Land development (. percent) was the preferred activity followed by irrigation facilities (9.9 percent). In fact, there were some other activities, which were preferred by many people (9. percent). The states of Gujarat, Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh, and many others preferred irrigation facilities. In the states of Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Sikkim and Jammu and Kashmir, no irrigation activity was carried out. In the state of Assam, only plantation and horticulture was carried out. In Jammu and Kashmir, majorly Land Development activities were taken up. About 9 percent of the individual beneficiaries were satisfied with the work done on their land. But five percent of the respondents had a reason for their dissatisfaction. About 0 percent reported that work carried out was not good. Another 6 percent said that it was carried out for a longer period. The benefits given under the programme may be analyzed broadly on four parameters. (a) Irrigation Water - To gauge the impact of irrigation, the simple approach of before and after was adopted. There were, households without irrigation water, but with the assistance of MGNREGA, 7. percent of them reported receiving sufficient water for their crops. There were few families, which earlier had insufficient irrigation water, but after this programme, they are able to get sufficient water on their lands. (b) Cropping Pattern- There were about 8 percent households who were not taking any crops earlier. However, after land development or provision of irrigation facilities, percent of them were able to take double crops and percent were able to take multiple crops and another 9 percent started taking single cropping on their lands.

23 When further analysed, there were 706 households which were not taking up any crops in Rabi season, but after the programme they were taking crops in Rabi season such as wheat, paddy, Potato, chilly and others. Similarly, in summer season, there were 9 families who were not taking any crops but after this programme they started with the crops like wheat, maize, onion, paddy, rubber, potato, tomato and others. Regarding Khariff season, 7 households who were not taking up crops started with Paddy, cotton, soyabean, wheat, ginger, maize and others. (c) Migration- It was analyzed that there were 6 households, where members of the household had gone out to work outside, but with the increase in work opportunities on their own lands,.8 percent i.e. members of 99 household stopped going outside their village. But, at the same time, there were 8 households, whose members started moving out for work. Since, it is a common phenomenon in the villages that people move out of village to earn their livelihood. Tt is interesting to note that there was a net decrease in migration of members in around households (99-8=). (d) The individual beneficiaries were asked regarding the food security of their families. It was inferred from the data that 9 percent of the respondents reported that they had sufficient food throughout the year and 08 (9.7 percent) families felt that their situation improved because of MGNREGA work. So, it was found that MGNREGA was helping people to sustain themselves and was also supplementing their income. XI. Other stakeholders Mates -In total,06 mates were interviewed across the states. Out of these, 8. percent were males and 6.9 percent were females. Seventy percent of them were BPL and rest belonged to Other Households. It seems that literate villagers were preferred to become Mates, which is evident from the educational profile of this sample survey which shows that about 60 percent of the mates passed 0 th or higher class. The educational profile varied from illiterate to professional qualification. 7. percent of the mates said that they did not measure the works. 6 percent of the mates were satisfied with their jobs and 0 percent were dissatisfied and rest were neutral or indecisive. Gram Rozgar Sahayak-In total, 76 GRS were interviewed across the country; out of these 8. percent were males and.6 percent were females. The work of GRS was, reportedly, very challenging and for women more so because it involved lot of movement and interaction with several stakeholders. Majority were (60 percent) Graduate or above. 8 percent of the GRS knew that it was their responsibility to organize Employment Guarantee Day. They faced problems in organizing Employment Guarantee Days because of lack of funds, Panchayat was not proactive or villagers did not attend. Gram Panchayats - The Gram Panchayat (GP) is the pivotal body for implementation at the village level.98 percent of the Panchayats issued job cards and percent of the GP members said that cards were issued within a week. Most of the GP members reported that they followed all the guidelines of implementing the programme. Block Programme Officer -The Programme Officer essentially acts as a coordinator for NREGS at the Block level. The chief responsibility of the Programme Officer is to ensure that anyone who applies for work gets employment within days. They helped in preparing estimates for the Development Plans. BPOs have, reportedly, paid unemployment allowance to few job card holders in preceding three years. Rest had not paid because there

24 were no such cases. The maximum works in the sampled Blocks was undertaken by the Gram Panchayats. At times, they had to change the implementing agencies (0 BPOs reported about this) in the ongoing work because of lack of technical expertise or lack of capacity to handle work within the stipulated time. In fact, BPOs took initiatives in providing employment to the desired job holders when GPs were not able to provide the works as expressed by 7 BPOs (out of 7). 0 BPOs, reportedly, never found involvement of any contractor in the MGNREGA works whereas 7 BPOs did find involvement of contractors several times and 0 found them sometimes. District Programme Coordinator - The overall responsibility for ensuring that the Scheme is implemented, according to the Act, belonged to District Programme Coordinator (DPC) at the District level, who could be either the Chief Executive Officer of the District Panchayat, or the District Collector, or any other District-level officer of appropriate rank. 9 DPCs said that GPs did maximum works in their districts, 6 of them said that they had to change the implementing agencies in the ongoing work once or more due to lack of technical expertise or misappropriation of funds, 8 of them said that they have taken initiatives several times to provide employment to the needy job card holders, 8 of them never found involvement of contractors in the execution of works. Six found contractors several times and they took action against them. XII. Works and Assets verified under the Survey In this survey, the works (7) taken up during the reference period (00- to 0-) in all the sampled villages was verified. It was observed that more stress was laid on the rural connectivity rather than on water conservation. It was taken up in large proportion ( percent of total works) especially in northern and north-eastern states. Of the seven permissible areas, the maximum number of water conservation activities was taken up in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, where more than 60 percent works were taken up in this category. At all India level,.6 percent of the verified works fell under this category. Another.6 percent and 7.7 percent works fell under Drought proofing (including afforestation and plantation) and flood control and protection works. The survey teams verified the status of each of the works undertaken during the reference period. It was observed that 90 percent of the works were physically completed as per the survey, which was very high in comparison to the national average. There may be some issues with the record keeping and utilization certificate which may be a reason for not issuing completion certificate by the authorities. The five percent works in others category were found stalled/abandoned. About percent of the Drought Proofing activities were found ongoing. It is worth noting that in the states of Tripura and Meghalaya all the initiated works were physically verified as completed. In this survey, it emerged that 98 percent of the verified works was executed by the Gram Panchayat. Intermediate Panchayat, District Panchayat and Line departments also executed few projects across the country. There seem to be the role of line departments in the flood mitigation works. This may be because the works verified by the survey teams were the works taken up near the sampled villages, where chances of executing agency other than GP was very less. The ratio of wage costs to material costs should be 60:0 as stipulated in the Act. This ratio should be applied preferably at the Gram Panchayat, Block and District levels. In this

25 survey, all the verified works fall well within the stipulated ratio, which means that stress was laid on manual workers. It was observed that at all India level, a little over / th of the total expenditure was spent on wages. The data shows that Sikkim spent more than70 percent on materials, while Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa and Chhattisgarh had spent bit more than 0 percent. This shows that these states took less labour intensive works. In the list of the works collected by the survey teams, out of the total workers, just 9.9 percent were women workers. When seen state wise, Tamil Nadu had the highest women workforce, and Punjab the lowest. The percentage of women workforce varied from.6 percent to 9.6 percent. These figures are in contrast with the national average of participation of women in the workforce. At the Gram Panchayat level, records were verified. Job card application register, which is basic to the programme, was found in 88 percent of the sampled villages. percent could not produce it for verification. Job card registers were available in 9.7 percent cases. There were 0 percent Blocks where no records were shared with the survey team. There seems to be the problem of record updation at the block level, as is evident from the survey findings. XIII. Planning and transparency Just 6 percent of the beneficiaries were aware of the Gram Sabha and about percent of the total sampled households have attended Gram Sabha once or more. The programme which lays stress on participatory approach, gets defeated to some extent at the first step only. This is quite shocking, that being in the village these households are not part of any developmental or political activity of the village. It was also seen that more minority households have attended the gram Sabha than hindu households. Among scheduled tribes also, around 60 percent households have attended Gram Sabha once or more. Just percent of the Scheduled castes households have attended Gram Sabhas. From the responses, it came emerged that there were 0 villages, where no Gram Sabhas were held, which is the basic to any Planning. Generally, the whole process was reportedly followed for preparing District Development Plans. Sometimes, some proposals got stuck because of parameters and guidelines. Then line departments were roped in to guide the Panchayat, Block and District officials. Employment Guarantee Day It should be organized regularly and at various locations or at more than one place as per the convenience of the beneficiaries. But, when responses from all the stakeholders were compared, the picture was quite contradictory. The response from the direct beneficiaries, on whom, the whole programme is focussed on, was in direct contradiction with the district authorities. It may be seen clearly that just. percent of household beneficiaries and 8. percent of mates reported that such Employment Guarantee days were organized. In contrast to this, 97 percent of the District officials said that it was organized regularly in all the villages and frequency was from weekly to monthly. In fact, GP officials and GRS were in contradiction with the beneficiaries. It seems that wherever the Employment Guarantee Day was organized, it was done in a proper manner. Of these,979 households who said employment Guarantee programme was organized, percent reported that it was organized weekly,. percent said fortnightly and. percent said that it was organized monthly. About 7 percent of these

26 households said that it is organized at only one place and another 7. percent said that it was organized in all the wards. The same has been represented graphically in Figure.. Monitoring Monitoring is done at GP, Block and District levels. There are inbuilt mechanisms to monitor the progress of the programme. Vigilance and Beneficiary Committee (VMC) and Local Beneficiary Committees are appointed in the locality or villages where the work is undertaken to monitor the progress and quality of the work and for effective articulation of people s entitlements and their access to information. Sixty five percent of mates confirmed existence of appointed vigilance committees in the villages and 6. percent said that there were beneficiary committees, too. The respondents from seventy eight percent of the GP schedule said that there were Vigilance and Monitoring Committee in the village to monitor the works but just 8 percent reported about availability of Beneficiary Committee. Eighty nine percent of the BPOs and 97.8 percent of DPCs reported that there were Vigilance and Monitoring Committee appointed at the village level but constitution of Beneficiary committee was reported by just percent of the BDOs and percent of DPCs. Monitoring by Block Programme Officers and District Programme Coordinators (BPOs and DPCs) It is worth noting that DPCs and BPOs cover all the important aspects regularly during the monitoring process but not the unemployment allowance. It was noted that unemployment allowance was never monitored by about 0 percent of the BPOs and percent of DPCs. In fact, one more aspect which needs to be monitored regularly and corrected is the training need of the frontline workers. percent of the BPOs and percent of DPCs said that they don t see this aspect regularly. If personnel working in the programme is trained thoroughly then many delays and discrepancies may be avoided in the long run. Duplicity and ghost card holders need to be monitored thoroughly and regularly. Grievance Redressal In case of any complaint about Job Card, Wage rate or delay in providing the work, the household respondents approached GRS, Sarpanch, BPO and even District officer. People preferred to approach Sarpanch first, GRS second and then later authorities because of the obvious reasons of distance and availability of these persons. Complaint Register- About percent of the households said that complaint registers were available at the GP office, percent said that there were no such registers and.7 percent were not aware of any such provision about complaints. Just thirty eight percent of the household respondents said that their complaints were disposed within days which means that their grievance redressal system was quite weak. Eighty six percent of the GP respondents said that complaint registers were made available to the beneficiaries but when actually verified, in just 6 percent of the villages, complaint registers were provided to the beneficiaries. About 9 percent of the BDOs and 9. percent of DPCs said that they had maintained complaint registers at their office and their complaints were solved within the stipulated timeframe. DPCs said that complaints were uploaded on the internet also. 6

27 Social audits are organized to ensure transparency in the planning, implementation and monitoring. The Mates, GRS and block level officials are expected to attend these programmes. t all DPCs and BPOs had, reportedly, attended social audits. Mates and GRS also attended Gram Sabhas and Social Audits. The Sarpanch and other members were expected to be the part of all the social audits yet only 9 percent of them attended social audit. Just 6 percent of them could inform about the social audit findings. In 9 percent of GPs, members found this social audit to be effective and rest did not. They said that information was not provided and weaker sections are not permitted to participate in the social audit. But, when research team asked the household beneficiaries about Social Audit, about 8 percent of them knew about it and just 7. percent households had attended it. When analysed caste wise, it was observed that very few Scheduled tribes households ( percent) and minority households (0.8 percent) have attended social audit. SCs have also less percentage of attending this exercise. About 0 percent of households belonging to other castes, have attended social audits. XIV. Recommendations and Suggestions Through the survey and FGDs with villagers/ beneficiaries in the villages, interactions with Panchayat level officials, Mates, GRSs, interviews with Block and District level officials who are implementing this programme and meetings with State Commissioners, few issues emerged and therefore, following suggestions have been made in the report to make the programme more effective and efficient: Mobilization of the communities/ villagers Training of Functionaries Staff Motivation Capacity building of the PRI functionaries Ensuring timely fund flow Ensuring Transparency and strengthening accountability measures Increase in Wages Ensuring wage - material ratio Ensuring participatory Planning Gender, Disability and Age Mainstreaming 7

28 8

29 Chapter -. Background of the MGNREGA INTRODUCTION Among all the wage employment programmes planned and implemented for the livelihood security of the working population of rural India, MGNREGA is unique, as it is community based, demand driven and has a legal provision for providing 00 days of wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. There were several employment generating programmes for the rural working population of the country like Rural Works Programme (RWP) in 96, Cash Scheme for Rural Employment (CSRE) and Food for Work Programme (FEWP) in the 970s, National Rural Employment Programme (NREP) and Rural Labour Employment Guarantee Programme (RLEGP) in the 980s, and the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY), the Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS), and the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana (SGRY) in the 990s. Primary objective of these programmes were to provide wage employment to the poor/vulnerable sections of population of the country, who for several reasons, were unable to get assimilated into the mainstream development process and were not ensured for their access to legitimate rights and entitlements. Meanwhile, Indian Economy during post liberalization period (after 99) witnessed high annual average growth rate (seven to nine percentage) but at the same time, the annual growth rate of employment registered declined from.0 percent over 98-99/9 to.8 percent (. percent in rural areas and. percent in urban areas) in 00-00; which was much below the rate of growth of the labour force and growth of population (Pranati, 009). This undesired trend of Indian economy triggered discussions among civil society members, academicians and policy makers that some policy measures has to be adopted to protect the marginal and vulnerable families especially in rural areas from the negative consequences of liberalization. It was also realized that in the emerging situation, that the previous wage employment programmes were ineffective in solving the problems of unemployment in the rural areas. Thus, with a view to eliminate the weaknesses of the previous wage employment generating programmes, the Government of India introduced Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in 00. Life and Livelihood Security; A study on the effectiveness of MGNREGA in ensuring livelihood security and checking distress migration among vulnerable section of the population in People s Empowerment for Accessing Rights to Livelihood (PEARL) Programme Areas; Indo- Global Social Service Society (IGSSS) 9

30 The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was notified on 7 September 00. It was notified in 00 rural districts in its first phase of implementation (with effect from February 006). It was extended to an additional 0 rural districts in financial year All the remaining districts were notified with effect from April, 008. Since then, MGNREGA has covered the entire country with the exception of districts that have a hundred percent urban population... SALIENT FEATURES OF THE ACT Adult members of a rural household, willing to do unskilled manual work, may apply for registration in writing or orally to the local Gram Panchayat. The Gram Panchayat after due verification will issue a Job Card. The Job Card will bear the photograph of all adult members of the household willing to work under MGNREGA and is free of cost. The Job Card should be issued within days of application. A Job Card holder may submit a written application for employment to the Gram Panchayat, stating the time and duration for which work is sought. The minimum days of employment have to be at least fourteen. The Gram Panchayat will issue a dated receipt of the written application for employment, against which the guarantee of providing employment within days operates. Employment will be given within days of application for work, if it is not then daily unemployment allowance as per the Act has to be paid and liability of payment of unemployment allowance is of the States. Work should ordinarily be provided within km radius of the village. In case agricultural work is provided beyond km, extra wages of 0% are payable to meet additional transportation and living expenses. Wages are to be paid according to the Minimum Wages Act 98 for labourers in the State, unless the Centre notifies a wage rate which will not be less than Rs. 60/- per day. Equal wages will be provided to both men and women. Wages are to be paid according to piece rate or daily rate. Disbursement of wages has to be done on weekly basis and not beyond a fortnight in any case At least one-third beneficiaries shall be women who have registered and requested work under the scheme. Work site facilities such as crèche, drinking water, shade have to be provided. The shelf of projects for a village will be recommended by the Gram Sabha and approved by the Zila Panchayat. 0

31 At least 0% of works will be allotted to Gram Panchayats for execution Permissible works predominantly include water and soil conservation, afforestation and land development works. A 60:0 wage and material ratio has to be maintained. contractors and machinery will be used. The Central Government bears the 00 percent wage cost of unskilled manual labour and 7 percent of the material cost including the wages of skilled and semi-skilled workers. Social Audit has to be done by the Gram Sabha. Grievance redressal mechanisms have to be put in place for ensuring a responsive implementation process. All accounts and records relating to the Scheme should be available for public scrutiny... PARADIGM SHIFT FROM WAGE EMPLOYMENT PROGRAMMES MGNREGA marks a paradigm shift from all precedent wage employment programmes. The significant aspects of this paradigm shift are captured as below: i). ii). iii). iv). v). vi). MGNREGA provides a statutory guarantee of wage employment. It provides a rights-based framework for wage employment. Employment is dependent upon the worker exercising the choice to apply for registration, obtain a Job Card, and seek employment for the time and duration that the worker wants. There is a day time limit for fulfilling the legal guarantee of providing employment. The legal mandate of providing employment in a time bound manner is underpinned by the provision of Unemployment Allowance. The Act is designed to offer an incentive structure to the States for providing employment as ninety percent of the cost for employment provided is borne by the Centre. There is a concomitant disincentive for not providing employment as the States then bear the double indemnity of unemployment and the cost of unemployment allowance. Unlike the earlier wage employment programmes that were allocation based, MGNREGA is demand driven. Resource transfer under MGNREGA is based on the demand for employment and this provides another critical incentive to States to leverage the Act to meet the employment needs of the poor. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 00 (NREGA), Operational Guidelines 008, rd Edition

32 vii). MGNREGA has extensive inbuilt transparency safeguards a) Documents: Job Cards recording entitlements (in the custody of workers) written application for employment, Muster Rolls, Measurement Books and Asset Registers. b) Processes: Acceptance of employment application, issue of dated receipts, time bound work allocation and wage payment, Citizen Information Boards at worksites, Vigilance Monitoring Committees, regular block, district and state level inspections and social audits viii). The public delivery system has been made accountable, as it envisages an Annual Report on the outcomes of MGNREGA to be presented by the Central Government to the Parliament and to the Legislature by the State Government. Specifically personnel responsible for implementing the Act have been made legally responsible for delivering the guarantee under the Act.. Rationale of the study The programme is running since 006 and was extended to the whole of the country in 008. Till year, 0-, the programme has distributed Rs.,,000 crores directly as wages, generated,8 crores of person days employment in 6 lakhs works. During the XI Plan period the Union Govt. released Rs.,,0 crores and total expenditure was Rs.,7,69 crores on MGNREGA (this includes State contributions). Despite huge expenditure and far reaching consequences of such an intervention in rural sector, no national level study has been conducted so far to study it holistically. As the programme was picking up the pace and coverage over the years, many studies were carried out by Ministry of Rural Development and by other independent organizations to assess its output, impact and acceptance among the people. Many of these studies have been compiled by the Ministry in Sameeksha. Few of these studies have studied impact of MGNREGA on agriculture land development (IISC Bangalore, IIFM Bhopal etc); few studied the impact on women (UNIFEM, NIRD etc.) The study of NIRD was carried out in 7 states with the focus on changing gender relations. Some research papers have studied one district or one state in totality but there was no study with all India coverage encompassing all the components of the programme alongwith its impact. Thus, this initiative was taken by the Ministry of Rural Development who decided to conduct a national level Evaluation of MGNREGA to study the programme in a holistic manner. In this study, 8 states have been covered; more than 0,000 households have been interviewed on all the aspects of programme implementation,including benefits from the programme and impact on their life. This has made it the largest evaluation study conducted so far in India. MGNREGA- Report to the People, Ministry of Rural Development, nd Feburary, 0

33 . Research Objectives The main objective of the study was to assess how far the goals of livelihood security of the poor including the marginalized sections of the society like SCs, STs, Minorities etc. have been achieved. Specific objectives of the study were: To examine the efficacy of process of registration of households, issuing of job cards, payment of wages through banks/post offices, Grievance redressal mechanism and Social Audit by Gram Sabha. To assess the physical and financial performance of the states under MGNREGA over a period of last three fiscal years i.e. 00-, 0-, 0- and to understand the reasons of best and poor performance of states. To assess the social and economic impact of MGNREGA on village community in general and on marginalized sections of the society (SC, ST, Minorities etc.) in particular. To examine whether: o o o o 0% of the total works have been executed by Gram Panchayat 60:0 wage and material ratio has been maintained / rd of the total beneficiaries are women Equal wages have been provided to both men and women o Wages have been paid according to Minimum Wages Act 98 o o o Disbursement of wages has been done on weekly basis and not beyond a fortnight in any case. Disbursement of wages has been done through banks, post offices etc. Work site facilities such as crèche, drinking water and shade have been provided To gauge the perception of the people about MGNREGA in relation to the availability of employment during lean season, wage rates & disbursement of wages, migration of people from village and worksite facilities. To study the various types of assets created under MGNREGA and people s perception about the usefulness and quality of these assets. To know the change in agricultural productivity due to creation of water conservation, water harvesting, irrigation related assets in rural areas. To study the individual beneficiary scheme under MGNREGA and assess its socio-economic impact on the beneficiary household.

34 To assess the demand as well as supply side of MGNREGA and estimate employment potential of the scheme.. Scope of Work The reference period for the current study was 00-, 0- and 0- (three years). The study got delayed for some unavoidable reasons, so year 0- was also taken up for the study. Broadly, the study covered 8 major states of the country and 0 sampled districts in these 8 states. This study was done through a network of Evaluating Agencies (EAs).. Approach and Methodology.. Process for Study Implementation For the sake of administrative convenience and timely completion of fieldwork, entire country was divided into 9 zones as given below. To carry out the evaluation in these zones, Ministry selected five field agencies. The name of these five agencies is mentioned in the Annexure-. Zones. of States States Table.: States and Zones Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir Rajasthan, Haryana Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh Tripura, Sikkim, West Bengal, Bihar 6 6 Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Mizoram 7 Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Odisha 8 Goa, Gujarat, Maharashtra 9 Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu.. Sampling Design Multi stage stratified sampling design was used to select districts, blocks, Gram Panchayats (GPs) and Households. The detailed sampling note is enclosed as Annexure-... Selection of Households and Respondents The nodal agency (NA) identified one village from each selected GP and a list of households of that village was provided from the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) data. Out of the provided list of households (list of extra households were given to avoid problem of refusal, lock households etc.) Evaluating Agency (EA) listed 00 households and collected information in the listing format (as given in Annexure-) from the adult member of the residential household.

35 Based on the listing data, EA first distributed households of every Village/PSU on the basis of the following:. Households that have received an average of >7 days of work in last three fiscal years,. Households that have received an average of - 0 days of work in last three fiscal years,. Households that have received an average of <0 days of work in last three fiscal years, or even no work despite having demanded the same. Households that have received only compensatory wages in lieu of work demanded during last three years (if available) After distributing the 00 households in the above mentioned criteria, households having job cards were selected purposively from the following categories: households from SC, households from ST, households from Minorities and 9 households of general population. In case the required numbers of SC, ST and Minorities households were not available in the 00 listed households, it was then substituted from the category of general population. In some states or districts, it was difficult to maintain this quota at the PSU or village level, in such circumstances agency tried to maintain quota in the following order. If EA unable to maintain quota at the PSU/village level, agency tried to maintain quota at the block level. If EA unable to maintain quota at the block level, agency tried to maintain quota at the district level. If EA unable to maintain quota at the district level, agency tried to maintain quota at the state level. If agency failed to maintain quota even at the state level, agency substituted households from any one or two of the categories i.e. SC, ST & Minorities, depending upon the prevalence of that category in the region... Sample Size A total of 0 households were covered from each district. In every district, blocks were chosen and from each block 9 GPs and from each GP that village was selected

36 which was named after GP. From each GP village, households and households of individual MGNREGA beneficiaries were selected. At all India level, a total of 0 districts, 0 blocks,,77 GPs, 0,90 households and, individual beneficiary households were proposed to be covered under this study..6 Coverage The state wise achieved sample size across different categories has been presented as below: Table.: State-wise achieved sample size State Districts Blocks GP/Village Households Beneficiary MATE GP GRS Andhra Pradesh Arunachal Pradesh Assam Bihar Chhattisgarh Goa Gujarat Haryana Himachal Pradesh Jammu & Kashmir Jharkhand Karnataka Kerala Madhya Pradesh Maharashtra Manipur Meghalaya Mizoram Nagaland Odisha Punjab Rajasthan Sikkim Tamilnadu 00 Tripura Uttar Pradesh Uttarakhand West Bengal Total A total of 0,89 households,, individual beneficiaries and,70 GPs, blocks and 0 districts have been covered under this study. The list of districts may be seen in Annexure. Although, the sample size achieved during the survey is slightly lower than the expected coverage and it has been achieved from,70 GPs. This has happened because of the non-availability of required number of GPs having sufficient number of works undertaken under MGNREGA. States like Punjab, 6

37 Nagaland, Meghalaya, Manipur and Goa did not provide any benefit to individual beneficiary under MGNREGA..7 Research Tools In order to meet the objectives of this evaluation study, a number of structured and semi structured research tools were used to capture information from various stakeholders. The following research tools were used to collect the information from states, districts, blocks, villages and households- Listing Format Household Questionnaire Individual MGNREGA Beneficiary Questionnaire Mate Questionnaire Gram Panchayat Questionnaire Gramin Rozgar Sahayak (GRS) Questionnaire Focus Group Discussion Guidelines Block Programme Officer Schedule District Programme Coordinator Schedule Employment Guarantee Commissioner The research tools may be seen at Annexure..8 Data Quality Monitoring To ascertain the quality of the data collected during fieldwork by the Evaluating Agencies, dal Agency conducted percent back check of the data collected by Evaluating Agencies (EA). Out of 0 districts, 0 blocks and 77 PSUs, 7 PSUs of 99 blocks and districts were visited for back check and around 08 households (. percent of completed households) were visited again for back check. To conduct the back check, a separate team was sent to some of the sampled PSUs and around 0- households were back checked. Before going to the PSU for back check, information pertaining to the listed households and interviewed households were collected from the EAs and a brief questionnaire of around factual questions was also prepared. This questionnaire was canvassed in the PSU by a separate team in the interviewed households. Data collected from back check and by the EAs were compared. NA did not find any PSU where team had not visited to conduct survey. Minor variations in the responses collected by EA and NA were found but they were also within permissible limit of percent. Please refer annexure for details. 7

38 .9 Limitations Sampling of the Blocks and Gram Panchayats were based on the physical and financial data downloaded from the ministry s website. In some cases due to non-availability of data of a particular reference year of the sampled blocks and GPs, blocks and GPs were substituted from other reference years. As per the research design we had to select 9 GPs from each block where at least Rupees lakhs or more MGNREGA works have been undertaken during the reference period. In some blocks there were less than 9 GPs who have undertaken Rs. lakhs or more amount work in the reference period. In such cases, either one additional block was selected or some additional GPs were selected from other sampled blocks. In few instances, not a single GP was available meeting GP selection criteria; in such cases block was replaced with another block in the same district. 8

39 Chapter - PHYSICAL AND FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF THE STATES MGNREGA was initiated by the Government of India to provide employment during the time of lean period and distress. When there is lack of work opportunities in agriculture and non-agriculture sector, people tend to adopt negative coping mechanism like taking loans, compromising with food, education and health, and this leads to multiple problems. Therefore, this programme was started to provide social protection in terms of livelihood security to the rural people. It is implemented in all the rural districts of the country. India's rural employment guarantee programme MGNREGA has been ranked as the world's largest public works programme, providing social security net to almost per cent of the country's population, The World Bank Group Report.. The National Scenario The programme started in 006 in few districts and by the year 0-, it was spread across all the districts of the country. Therefore, it was considered apt to highlight few important indicators of the programme, on which some basic analysis can be drawn. The performance of the programme on these indicators for the year 00-, 0- and 0- has been presented in the Table.. Table.: Physical and financial performance of the programme during the reference period Financial Years A. Physical Works Total Works taken up (in lakhs) Works completed (in lakhs)) Work Complete ratio B- Person Days generated Total person days generated (in crores) Person days generated for SCs % % % Person Days generated for STs % 8% 8% Person days generated for Women 8% 8% % Financial Years Average person days per employed household C- Financial Details Total available funds (in Rs crores) Expenditure (in Rs. crores) 977(7%) 80(78%) 967(88%) Expenditure on unskilled wages (in Rs. crores) World Bank Group's report 'The State of Social Safety Nets 0 9

40 Financial Years Expenditure on unskilled wages to total expenditure (in %) 6.% 6.% 68.% D. Types of work taken up Water conservation 8% 60% 6% Works on individuals land 8% % % Rural Connectivity 8% 7% % Land Development % 8% 6% Any other activity.7%.6% 9.66% Rajiv Gandhi Seva Kendra 0.% 0.% 0.8% Coastal Areas 0.00% Rural Drinking Water 0.0% Fisheries 0.0% Rural Sanitation % Source: nrega.nic.in Physical Works-Number of works is carried out across country keeping in mind the potential demand of the people and particular region/area. It has been observed that maximum works were taken up in the category of Water Conservation followed by Rural Connectivity. In the reference period, 8 percent, 60 percent and 6 percent works were taken up in the category of Water Conservation in the years 00-0, 0-0 and 0-0 respectively. In the year 00-0, 8 percent, 7 percent and percent of the works were taken up in rural connectivity, This focus on water and land development (which has also been taken up) may increase the land productivity in future and people may move from wage employment to sustainable employment in their own villages. A study conducted by Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore during 0- has indicated that such works as taken up under MGNREGA have contributed to improved ground water levels, increased water availability for irrigation, increased area irrigated by ground and surface water sources and improved drinking water availability for humans and livestock. 6 Emphasis has been laid out in the guidelines that all the required feasibility assessment of the selected/ approved works should be carried out in advance. Still, at times the works are not found to be appropriate for the concerned area and it gets abandoned in between due to some or the technical problems. There are instances, where proper costing is not done in advance for the works. So, the works get stalled in between due to lack of funds. Different states have different reasons for incomplete works. Sameeksha 7 which is an Anthology of Research Studies on MGNREGA also quotes that that completion rate of works, just as in case of quality of assets, is dependent 6 Environmental Benefits and Vulnerability Reduction through Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme; Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore;0 7 MGNREGA Sameeksha, An Anthology of Research Studies on MGNREGA,00;

41 on district / region specific implementation of the Scheme and is affected by poor planning, lack of technical support, irregular flow of funds and delayed payments. All India status of the works taken up and completed is shown in Figure.. The work completed ratio is also shown in the figure in bracket, which is showing a drastic decline in the year 0- from percent to percent. Figure.- Status of Physical works of MGNREGA in three years Total Works taken up (in lakhs) (%) 8.6 (%). (%) Works completed (in lakhs) In 0-, the average work completion percentage for India was percent. The completion percentage is cumulative of both spill over works from the previous year and new works in the current year. Goa Andhra ArunachalPradesh Maharashtra Jammu & Kashmir Orissa Karnataka Bihar Rajasthan Meghalaya Sikkim Assam MP Jharkhand HP Mizoram uttarakhand Nagaland Punjab UP Gujarat Chhattisgarh West Bengal Haryana Manipur TN Kerala Tripura Figure.: Percentage of works completed in FY

42 In physical terms, work may get completed, but due to lack of proper record keeping, completion certificate is not issued for many works undertaken. The statewise work complete percentage is shown in Figure.. Tripura has a very good record in completing the works in year 0- followed by Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Manipur. Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh have a very low percentage. Each state has unique reasons for not completing the works. Employment - This programme is meant to provide employment to all needy and marginalized sections of the society. States have made their own mechanisms to mobilize marginalized sections and provided them with work opportunities. MGNREGA has provided basic income security to a large number of beneficiaries. It provides employment to, on an average, crore households, every year. This is almost 0 percent of the total rural households in the country. Since its inception MGNREGA has generated,7 crore person-days of employment up to December, 0 8. The nationwide break up of percentage of person-days generated among SC, ST and Women is shown in the Figure Figure.: Break up of Person Days in the reference period (in %) Person days generated for SCs Person Days generated for STs Person days generated for Women The state-wise percentage of man days generated for SC and ST population in 0- is shown in the Table-., below. Each state has its own demographic structure, therefore, SC workers were almost not found in north-eastern states. Similarly, in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, population of STs were almost negligible. 8 Mahatma Gandhi NREGA- Report to the People by Ministry of Rural Development, nd Feburary 0

43 Table.: Percentage of person days generated among SCs & STs in 0- States SC ST States SC ST Punjab Karnataka Haryana Kerala.8.6 Uttar Pradesh.8.0 Jharkhand West Bengal Chhattisgarh Tamilnadu.7. Maharashtra Himachal Pradesh Gujarat Bihar Assam Andhra.8. Sikkim. 0. Jammu & Kashmir Goa Rajasthan Manipur MP Nagaland Uttarakhand Meghalaya Odisha Arunachal Pradesh Tripura Mizoram Source: ngrega.nic.in Person-Days for Women: The participation of women as work force has been more than the obligatory guidelines of percent. Approximately, 9 percent of the workforce were women in the reference period. In FY 0-, person days generated for women were more than that of men at national level, which means Figure.: Person days generated for Women in FY 0- (in %) UP Assam Nagaland Mizoram ArunachalPradesh Bihar Jharkhand West Bengal Manipur Orissa Haryana Tripura Meghalaya MP Gujarat Sikkim Maharashtra Karnataka Punjab Chhattisgarh uttarakhand Jammu & Kashmir Andhra HP Rajasthan TN Goa Kerala that it is preferred more by women, may be because of the proximity of work sites to their homes. But, when analysed state-wise, there emerges a different scenario across various states highlighting a large variation in the proportion of women work days (0 percent to 9 percent). Kerala has been the state where 9 percent of the person days were generated by women workers. Goa and Tamil Nadu stand at second and third place. The lowest number of women person days was generated in Uttar Pradesh.

44 Average Person Days per employed Household- The national average of employment per household has been 7 days, days and 6. days for the years 00-, 0- and 0-, respectively. The entitlement is of 00 days, which is the maximum one household can get in a year. It has also varied across the states. In FY 0-, Mizoram and Tripura have provided 87.8 and 87.0 person days per household, respectively. During the same time, Goa has provided just.6 days of average work to the employed households as shown in Figure.. Higher average person days generated in the states of Tripura and Mizoram shows that there is high demand of work and these states have implemented it quite seriously. Goa Assam Punjab UP Arunachal Pradesh Orissa West Bengal MP Jharkhand Gujarat uttarakhand Haryana Bihar Chhattisgarh Jammu & Kashmir Karnataka HP Rajasthan Meghalaya Maharashtra Kerala Andhra TN Manipur Nagaland Sikkim Tripura Mizoram Figure.: Average person- days per employed household Financial Data-The financial data of the three years can be seen from the Table. and has been represented graphically in Figure.6. It can be observed that despite the demand for the programme, 00 percent utilization has not been there of the available funds across these years. The maximum utilization was in the year 0-, and that was to the tune of 88 percent. There are guidelines for spending also. The approved ratio for wage and material is 60:0. This ratio has been observed across all the years. Approximately, 68. percent of the expenditure in these three years was on wages.

45 Figure.6- Financial performance during the reference period (in Crore Rupees) Total available funds (in Rs crore) Expenditure on unskilled wages (in Rs. Crore) Expenditure (in Rs. Crore) The financial data of the year 0- reflects that, nationally, wage component of the programme was 68. percent, which means.7 percent was spent on materials and skilled labour. Thus, the expenses were well within the limits in both the heads, though, more can be spend on wages under all the works, if more manual labour is engaged. It may be seen that in the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu more than 90 percent has been spent on wages. The states of Manipur, Gujarat, Sikkim, Odisha, MP, Jharkhand and Karnataka have spent less than 60 percent on the wages. Manipur Gujarat Sikkim Orissa MP Jharkhand Karnataka Nagaland ArunachalPradesh Bihar Assam uttarakhand Haryana Punjab UP HP Tripura Rajasthan Meghalaya Andhra Jammu & Kashmir West Bengal Maharashtra Chhattisgarh Mizoram Goa Kerala TN Figure.7: Expenditure on unskilled wages to total expenditure (in %)

46 6

47 Chapter - Employment Potential of the Programme The unique and important aspect of the programme is demand for work. In this chapter, demand and supply of work has been analysed using listing data. During the survey, the households were first listed to find out the status of employment in the sampled villages. About 00 households were visited in each of the sampled village out of the provided Socio-Economic & Caste Census (SECC, MORD) list of households.. Profile of the listed households Total, 7,89 households were listed across the country. Out of this,.9 percent belonged to Other Backward Classes (OBCs),.7 percent belonged to Scheduled castes and 0.7 percent belonged to Scheduled Tribes (Table. in Annexure ). The listing data fairly represents the demographic profile of the states of the country. As per the economic status of the listed households,.7 percent households were BPL cardholders and they have been termed as BPL households and rest 6. percent were termed as other households 9. In Punjab, out of the total listed households only 8. percent were BPL, whereas in Karnataka 9 out of 0 listed households were BPL. Figure-. State wise proportion of BPL & Other households among listed households Karnataka Chhattisgarh Manipur Andhra Pradesh Gujarat Meghalaya Arunachal Pradesh Kerala Odisha INDIA Jammu & Kashmir Uttar Pradesh Uttarakhand Himachal Pradesh Punjab % 0% 0% 60% 80% 00% Other HH BPL HH 9 Those households have been categorised as other households who confirmed that they were not having/issued a BPL card. These households may be a BPL households who have not got BPL card or they may be an APL household. 7

48 The state wise social and economic composition as represented in the listing data is shown in Table. in Annexure. When social and economic categorization is seen together, an interesting analysis emerges. It is seen that maximum number of BPL households (9. percent) were listed in Karnataka and social composition of these households shows that maximum of the listed households were OBCs (7. percent). Whereas, in Punjab, just 8. percent of the listed households were BPL and social composition of the listed households shows that maximum were Scheduled Castes (8. percent). So, It indicates that SCs in Punjab were probably better off, as maximum of them belonged to other than BPL households.. Occupation of Chief Wage Earner of Household The occupation of chief wage earner (CWE) in most of the cases comes under Unskilled Labour (.7 percent) followed by cultivators (.9 percent). State-wise details of the occupation of chief wage earner may be seen in Table. in Annexure-. In the state of Maharashtra and Rajasthan, the chief wage earners were mainly cultivators (Maharashtra: percent and Rajasthan:.8 percent). In Gujarat, the CWE were either labour- skilled (9. percent), unskilled (7. percent) or cultivators (.7 percent).. Number of Households which sought employment in the last three years The unique part of this programme is that any willing worker can demand work and it is the onus of the state government to provide them with the employment within fifteen days of such demand. Still, just 60. percent of the listed households had demanded work under the programme. In Meghalaya, Manipur and Nagaland, the entire listed sample had demanded work, whereas in Goa, just. percent of the listed population had demanded work. There is a variation in the demand pattern across the country. In states, more than 80 percent of the listed population had sought work and at the same time, in states, less than 0 percent of the listed population had sought employment. Refer Table. in Annexure- for state-wise details. When demand for work was analyzed regarding the occupations of the chief wage earner, it was observed that across all the occupational groups people have demanded work. Figure-. depicts on Y-axis the proportion of people who demanded the work under the MGNREGA and on X-axis various possible occupation categories. Out of the total unskilled labour, 70. percent demanded employment while remaining 9. percent did not. This was followed by skilled worker, 6 percent of which demanded employment under the programme. Even those inservice (7. percent) and owned shops (. percent) sought employment for their livelihood under this programme. 8

49 Figure.: Labour demand by occupation groups This data when further disaggregated as per economic classification (BPL Households and Other Households) revealed that more BPL households (7.7 percent) have demanded work than Other households (6.8 percent). Punjab and Gujarat are the only states, where this trend is reversed. In Punjab, 67. percent Other households and 6.6 percent BPL households demanded work, and in Gujarat, 87. percent BPL households and 88. percent Other households demanded work. Figure.a: Labour demand by economic groups WB Goa AP Haryana Uttarakhand Maharashtra Odisha UP Bihar Jharkhand Kerala Rajasthan INDIA MP Karnataka Punjab Chhattisgarh Sikkim Tamilnadu Gujarat HP J&K Tripura Assam Ar.P Mizoram Nagaland Meghalaya Manipur APL Households Goa Maharashtra UP WB Uttarakhand Odisha Rajasthan Jharkhand Haryana AP Punjab MP INDIA Kerala Karnataka Bihar Sikkim Chhattisgarh Gujarat Tamilnadu HP J&K Tripura Ar.P Assam Mizoram Manipur Meghalaya Nagaland BPL Households N= Percent 00.0 N= Percent

50 As far as supply side of the employment under MGNREGA is concerned, all the states have made efforts to provide employment to the people who demanded work as reflected in the national average of 99. percent (refer Table. in Annexure-). The average for BPL and Other households for the same is 99.7 percent and 98.9 percent, respectively It may be seen in the Figure., that in the states of rth Eastern India, 00 percent of the listed households, demanded employment and they all were provided with employment opportunities also. When this data was analysed according to occupational and economic categories, it was found that Maximum demand had come from unskilled BPL households, 6. households had demanded employment. This was calculated by classifying all the occupational categories into BPL and Other households, then calculating, how many BPL households unskilled workers and other households unskilled workers demanded employment. There is a different trend among cultivators and in-service categories, where more number of other households have demanded employment than BPL households Figure.b: Demand of work - Economic and occupational group wise (Figures in %) N= APL BPL Unskilled Labour Skilled Labour Cultivator Petty TraderShop Owner Service (Govt./Pvt.) Self Employed Artisan Others. Average number of days of employment under MGNREGA in a year The performance of MGNREGA in terms of full realization of the entitled 00 days of work per year appears to be very low. The table at. in Annexure- further reveals that only.8 percent received employment, for an average, of more than 80 days while only 7.9 percent received on an average 6-80 days of work. Just more than 0 percent got employment for an average of - 60 days. There were 6 percent of the households who got employment for less than 0 days. 0

51 In Tripura, 76. percent households worked for more than 80 days and another. percent worked for 6-80 days. Therefore, average number of employment days received by households in Tripura is high at 8.7 percent whereas national average is at. percent. In Meghalaya, 90.7 percent of households had worked for less than 0 days. This needs to be explored further that though the state has been prompt enough to provide employment to all the households demanding work, the number of days of work provided has been very low. This cannot be termed as a relief measure to the needy people. Similarly, the states of Nagaland and Manipur have not provided sufficient number of employment days. Please refer Table. in Annexure-. The states of Tripura, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim have been able to provide more than 60 days of employment to the households. Whereas, states of Mizoram, Goa, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Nagaland and Meghalaya have provided less than days of employment to the listed households.. Unemployment allowance Almost all who had demanded work got the work under MGNREGA. There were just 90 households out of,6,86 (demanded work), who did not get employment. However, out of these 90, just got unemployment allowance. Only one or two persons in the states of Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Rajasthan, Jammu & Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh have received unemployment allowance. Please refer Table. in Annexure -).6 Qualitative Findings It was observed that almost all the states have been prompt to provide the employment to th people demanding work. Thus, there were savings on the component of un-employment allowance. It also came out from the FGDs and informal discussions with the villagers that written request for the demand for work is usually not accepted, as it binds state government for providing unemployment allowance. Therefore, whenever fund comes, then they call people for work and take their written demands. The system of demand driven work is operational only in Andhra Pradesh.

52

53 Chapter - GENERAL PROFILE This study is based on the survey of approximately forty thousand households, which were distributed across the country across many social and economic groups. The frequency distribution of these different groups may tell whether the programme has been able to reach the needy households and whether it has reached to the most vulnerable groups of the villages or not. Therefore, understanding the socio economic profile is equally important.. Economic Categorization of the Households Out of the total 0,89 sampled households in 8 states, 70.9 percent households belonged to BPL category (as per the response of the respondents). Of 8 states, states had more than 7 percent of the sampled household under BPL category. It is pertinent to note that West Bengal had the highest percentage (98.8 percent) of the sampled household under BPL category while Punjab had the lowest sampled households under BPL category. The state wise details of the BPL and Other households covered under this study may be seen in Table. in Annexure-. To understand more deeply the economic status of the surveyed households, a Wealth Index was developed using standard indicators and methodology 0. The reasons for conducting this analysis and the methodology adopted to develop this Wealth Index may be seen at Annexure 6. On the basis of the Wealth Index, households were arranged in order and divided into quintiles at the National Level & distributed among all the different states to pinpoint the distribution of Economic Status State wise. Finally, households having scores of Wealth Index from 0.00 to 0.0, 0. to 0.80 and 0.8 to.0 were named as Low, Middle and High Income groups respectively. Households score in the Wealth Index between 0.00 to 0.0 have been considered as poor households because they belong to lowest economic strata of the index and these households should ideally be having BPL card. Similarly, households score in the Wealth Index between 0.8 to.0 have been considered as rich or high income group households because they belong to highest economic strata of the index and ideally they should not have BPL card. These households were further bifurcated into BPL and Other Households on the basis of the availability of BPL cards. Those who had BPL cards were categorized as BPL households and those who did not have BPL cards were considered as Other Households. Finally, based on these two parameters Wealth Index and BPL status, households were distributed in six groups as depicted in subsequent table below. 0 Weblink for AHS 00-:

54 Table.: Categorization of sampled households as per the wealth ranking Low Income Group Other BPL HH HH Middle Income Group BPL Other HH HH High Income Group BPL HH Other HH Total % 8.% 7.%.8%.9% 8.% 00.0% It is evident from the above analysis that out of the total households covered, only.9 percent were real BPL Households and they were in possession of BPL card also while remaining 88. percent were either not poor but having BPL card or poor but not having any BPL card. It may also be seen that 809 (0 percent) households fall under Poor Income Group, and ideally, BPL cards should have been made of all these households, but there were 7 households (8. percent of the total sample), which did not have BPL cards. These are those people who are unable to avail benefits which a BPL card holder gets like subsidized food grains, preference in government programmes like IAY, NRLM etc. MGNREGA, it seems, has been able to provide some respite to the vulnerable groups. On the other hand, there were another 807 households (0 percent of total sample) which fall under High Income Group. Of them, 77 (.9 percent of total sample households) were having BPL cards and 6 (8. percent of total sample) were not having BPL cards.. Religion and caste The sample shows maximum representation of Hindus. The sample comprised of 79.9 percent Hindus followed by 9 percent Muslims, 6.9 percent Christians,.7 percent Sikhs and. percent other religions. The Christians were mainly covered in Nagaland (97 percent), Mizoram (80 percent, Meghalaya (7 percent), Arunachal Pradesh ( percent) and Goa (7 percent). Social Groups Figure.: Social and Religious Groups SCs STs OTHERs Hindus Muslims Chritians Sikhs Others

55 In the total sampled households, 8.6 percent were Scheduled castes and. percent were Scheduled tribes while 9. percent comprised of various other castes. In Punjab and Haryana, more than 0 percent sampled households were from SCs. In north eastern states like Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, and Mizoram, more than three-fourth of the sampled households belonged to scheduled tribes. In Gujarat, the ST households were more than SC households. Please refer Table. in Annexure-.. Family size It was observed from the household profile of the sampled households that the family size was small. As per Census of India Report, during the decade 00-0, the mean size of the households registered a substantial decline from. to.9. At all India level, the households with less than members were 6 percent. Household with family size of to 8 members were percent while rest of the households were having more than 8 members. There were eight states, where there was not a single household which had more than nine members. The average family size was of - members. In Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, about 0 percent and 9 percent households, respectively, had more than nine members in a household. The details may be seen in Table. in Annexure-.. Educational profile of the family members The educational profile of the household members revealed that about 7 percent household members were illiterates and another.6 percent were literate without any formal education About /th of the sampled household members have studied higher than 9th standard. In only three states viz Himachal Pradesh, Kerala and Goa, more than 0 percent family members have studied higher than 9th standard. The details of the educational profile may be seen in Table. in Annexure-.. Occupational profile of the registered job card members Though the programme is open to any occupational profile adult member wanting to work, however, it is found that only those sought employment under this programme who primarily work as labour. Among the sampled households, 68. percent were labourers (0.6 percent - agriculture labour, 9.9 percent labour other than agriculture and construction and eight percent construction labour). In acute conditions like drought, flood, emergency situations, cultivators (6 percent of the sample) also worked under MGNREGA. Changing Household Size in India: An Inter-State Comparison Debendra Kumar Nayak and Rabi Narayan Behera, Shillong, Meghalaya

56 .6 Number of other family members worked in MGNREGA Generally job cards are made in the name of the head of the household and names of the other interested persons are added along with it. It was seen from the profile of the households that almost all adult members of the household were registered and their names were mentioned in the issued job cards. People who have worked under MGNREGA were provided Job card but there were around 8-0 states namely, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Uttarakhand, J&K, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh where nearly - percent people have, reportedly, worked under MGNREGA without having their names in the job cards. These may be those members of the households whose name is not there in the job card but their households have been issued job card and they may have worked in the name of any other members whose name is there in the card. The details may be seen in Table no..6 in Annexure-..7 Quality of Life Flooring: - Floor of the house is one of the indicators which can help in understanding the economic status of the household. Data on type of floor of the household reveals that most of the job card holders of MGNREGA belonged to lower economic strata as adjudged from the flooring of their houses which was kutcha flooring (sand/ mud/cow-dung) in 68 percent cases. Twenty nine percent houses had cemented/ mosaic flooring and another.6 percent had stones/ tiles flooring in their houses. States like Punjab, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu were, reportedly, having more than 60 percent job card holders whose houses were either having cemented/mosaic floor or stone/tiles floor. It is important to note that 8 out of 8 states had more than 60 percent job card holders whose houses were having sand/mud/dung floors. Please refer Table.7. in Annexure-. Main source of Lighting: - It was good to see that around 70 percent of the households were having electricity supply but at the same time, the situation is not good in Bihar and Jharkhand, where just - percent households were having electricity supply. Their main source of lighting was kerosene. Similarly, in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, percent households were using kerosene for lighting. In the states of Punjab, Himachal, Mizoram, Karnataka and few more, 99 percent of the households had electricity supply. Please refer Table.7. in Annexure-. Type of Fuel used for Cooking:- Most of the households (7. percent) use wood for cooking. In Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, almost all use wood for cooking. In West Bengal, around percent households use Biogas for cooking, whereas in Tamil Nadu and Mizoram more than fifty percent use LPG as main fuel. In another seven states, more than twenty percent use LPG as main fuel, rest of the households use wood as the main fuel for cooking. Please refer Table.7. in Annexure. 6

57 Source of Drinking Water: About 90 percent of the sampled households in the states of Sikkim and Tamil Nadu had piped water supply for drinking, which is considered to be safe. In Himachal also, about 8 percent sampled households drink from piped water supply and 6 percent had private connections. But, states like Jharkhand, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh shows a poor picture in terms of piped water supply. t even 0 percent households had access to piped water in these states. Their main source of drinking water supply was public hand-pumps. The data shows that the situation of the households in the states of UP, Uttarakhand, Assam, Odisha, Mizoram and Rajasthan was also not good. Please refer Table.7. in Annexure. Toilet facility:- In the states of West Bengal, Tripura, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Assam, Mizoram, majority of the households had their private pit toilets. But, in the states of Odisha, Rajasthan, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, more than 80 percent of the sampled households were, reportedly, not having any toilet facility. In Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, percent people did not have toilet facility whereas 0- percent had private toilets. At all India level, 0 percent households had some kind of toilet facility whereas the rest 0 percent did not had any kind of toilet facility. Please refer Table.7. in Annexure..8 Access to land In India, having land not necessarily mean that the household is rich. Most of the times, these lands are barren, infertile and untreated. Data reveals that about percent of the sampled households have access to land; this shows that either the size of the land is small or the land they are having is not useful for cultivation which is a reason for people looking for employment under MGNREGA. In J&K, around 9 percent sampled households (Job card holders)have reported to have land. As the target group of the program is general population, it has nothing to do with landless or land owner households, BPL or Other households. However, in order to have an idea about the household s economic status, information pertaining to land ownership was collected. It may be seen from the Table.8 in Annexure that those who had ownership of land, of them 67. percent were BPL households and.9 percent were other households. If this analysis is done on the total sampled households, then it may be concluded that. percent of the sampled BPL households and 9. percent of sampled other households have access to the land or 0. percent of other sampled households and 8.6 percent of the sampled BPL households did not have access to the land. Unlike other programmes, MGNREGA is providing opportunity to both BPL and other population. It provides benefit to other households also, who did show willingness for casual labour under MGNREGA. It is providing employment opportunity to anyone irrespective of their land ownership. Please refer Table.8 in Annexure. 7

58 Figure.: Ownership of land (in %) BPL Others 0 Land Land.9 Expenditure on major heads It was considered important to know the expenditure pattern of the households, who work in MGNREGA. It was found that they spent more money on education and health. Keeping the time frame of last one year, a household, on an average, reportedly spent around Rs.,6 on health followed by Rs.80 on education. When state wise expenditure pattern was analyzed, it emerged that among all the states, households of Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand spent maximum on health. Households in J&K spent maximum on education (average of Rs.,8 in a year) and households in Gujarat spent maximum on social events. Please refer Tables.9. to.9. in Annexure. 8

59 Chapter - AWARENESS ABOUT MGNREGA AMONG VARIOUS STAKEHOLDERS Awareness about the programme and its provisions is important to analyse the demand for work and other entitlements under its purview. The success of any programme largely depends upon the awareness among the people. Hence, it becomes important for the implementing agencies to use local or simple language to effectively communicate the messages/ key features among the target audience. This study tried to find out which source of information is more effective in terms of awareness generation. Various sources of information about the programme awareness covered under study were Gram Sabhas, Sarpanchs, Radio/ TV, GRS and friends and relatives (Please refer Table. in Annexure-). It is clearly visible from Figure-., that Gram Sabha and Sarpanch/Gram Panchayat (GP) are the key role players in generating awareness about MGNREGA provisions across the country followed by Gram Rozgar Sahayak Sahayak s (GRS), Relatives/Friends and Radio/TV. The figure also shows that in the states of West Bengal, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand, Gram Sabha played a limited role in information dissemination. This may be due to the non-effectiveness of Gram Sabhas. It has been reported from FGDs that in many cases, Sarpanch passes the information to its affiliated members only. It is quite clear from these charts, that Radio/ TV had played a limited role in spreading awareness. Though, information spreads fast through word-of-mouth, however, in this case, it was not that effective because the information people acquired from relatives/friends was limited. Except for seven states, people, reportedly, did not share much among themselves. It might be due to lack of knowledge. GRS has been instrumental in spreading information in many states. In Tripura and West Bengal, it seems that GRS has been quite active in disseminating the information.. Awareness among beneficiaries and other main stakeholders about the scheme provisions As per the MGNREGA guidelines, there are key provisions and they are as under:. Application for registration and Obtaining a Job Card. Application for work. Getting signed and dated receipt for work application. Choice of time and duration of the work applied for. Provision of work within fifteen days of application 9

60 Figure.: Source of information about various MGNREGA provisions (in %) N=0,89 0

61 6. Provision of crèche, drinking water, first aid facilities on work site 7. Check Muster Rolls and information on employment in the Job Cards 8. Payment of wages within fifteen days of work done 9. Provision of unemployment allowance if employment is not provided within fifteen days of application or from the date when work is sought 0. Provision of additional ten percent wages when one travels more than Kms for work. Minimum Wage Rates prescribed by MGNREGA. percent work should be given to women. Provision of Filing Complaints. Provision of Social Audit at Frequency of 6 Months. Preparation of Shelf of Project by Panchayat Level of awareness was ascertained from all the interviewed households on the above important provisions of the MGNREGA. Maximum proportion of households (9. percent) were aware about the process of registration and obtaining the card. The households had good awareness on application for work, facilities to be made available at the worksite as shown in the Figure.. Figure.: Awareness of households about various provisions of MGNREGA Provision of Social Audit at Frequency of 6 Months 7.7 N: 0,89 Preparation of Shelf of Project by Panchayat 0.7 Provision of unemployment allowance if employment is not provided within fifteen days of Provision of additional ten percent wages when one travels more than Kms for work Minimum Wage Rates prescribed by MGNREGA Check Muster Rolls and information on employment in the Job Cards % work should be given to women Choice of time and duration of the work applied for Getting signed and dated receipt for work application Payment of wages within fifteen days of work done Provision of Filing Complaints Provision of work within fifteen days of application Provision of creche, drinking water, first aid facilities on work site Application for work Application for registration and Obtaining a Job Card Percent

62 Three out of four households were, reportedly, aware about the provision of work being available within fifteen days of one s application where as one out of four households was aware about the social audit through which transparency is maintained. About 0 percent of the households, reportedly knew that a shelf of works is prepared by the Gram Panchayat. Beside households, level of awareness on MGNREGA provisions was also assessed among Individual household beneficiaries, GP members, Mates and BPOs. Table. below present all India proportion of stakeholders aware about MGNREGA provisions. On the basis of these proportions, an awareness score has been worked out where 0 shows no awareness and shows 00 percent awareness. It is clear from the awareness scores that the highest awareness was found among BPOs (.0), followed by Mate (.8), GP members (.7), individual MGNREGA beneficiaries (.) and members of households (0.) of job card holders / wage seekers. (Please refer Annexure-6 for awareness score calculation) Table. Awareness among various stakeholders Maps. and. present state wise variations in the awareness among the sampled households and Gram Panchayats. These maps are showing scores calculated on the basis of percentage of responses given for fifteen different provisions of the programme. The southern and north eastern states have high awareness as compared to the northern states with Himachal Pradesh being the exception. The sampled households in Madhya Pradesh also present high awareness score. It may be seen from the map that awareness among GPs was generally more than the

63 households. In all the states, GPs had more awareness than their corresponding households. In just two states, J&K and Punjab, the awareness score of GPs was less than eight.. Awareness about various provisions of MGNREGA among Education and Occupation Groups Figures. and. present awareness levels by education and occupation. It may be seen that scores were more or less similar across both educational groups and occupational groups. As expected, the awareness was less in illiterate groups than any other groups. t much variation was observed in awareness scores among different occupation groups.

64 . Awareness among various Religious, Caste and other Social Groups The awareness levels was analysed across religious and caste groups also. The awareness score assigned to various groups may be seen at the Figure. below. Figure.: Awareness Score of various Groups Female headed HHs 0.6 Male headed HH 0. Other caste 0. ST. SC 9.8 Minorities 0.9 Hindu The awareness is little more in female headed households than in male headed households. When awareness scores were analysed among religious groups, it was found that minority households (which include all other than Hindu households) have more awareness than Hindus. ST households have more knowledge about provisions of MGNREGA than any other caste groups. In-fact, among all the groups analysed in the above figure, ST households have maximum knowledge and SC households have the least knowledge. The statewise figures for the awareness among these groups may be seen at table. in Annexure

65 PERCENT Chapter - 6 REGISTRATION OF JOB CARDS The registration of a household for MGNREGA is a simple process. Whosoever wants to get their household registered, can submit a request on a plain paper to local Gram Panchayat or can appear before the Panchayat Secretary or Gram Rozgar Sahayak (GRS) personally and make an oral request for registration. State governments have made efforts to register households under this programme and Gram Panchayats have also done their part. The door-to door surveys were conducted at many places to register willing households. In this chapter, the process of registration and issuing of job cards have been discussed. This is an important part of the programme. 6. First Job Card Made The job cards of most of the households (9 percent) were made before the year 00. In 00, the job cards of about percent households were made while rest of the households were late entrants to the programme. It is probably due to the fact that wage employment is the need of the villages; therefore, maximum people got registered in the initial years of the programme. Figure 6.: Year wise distribution of Job Cards made Before 00 In 00 In 0 In 0 In 0 In 0 N=0,89 6. Process of Registration for Job Cards The registration and issuance of job cards is the prime responsibility of the Gram Panchayat. As per the households survey, in 9. percent of the households, Sarpanch/ Panchayat members themselves contacted households to get their card made. But, another.6 percent had applied for these job cards to Gram Panchayat, GRS and other PRI members. The details of the responses may be seen in the Figure 6.. Similar response was given by the Gram Panchayat representatives also, that households submit their application mainly to the Gram Panchayats/PRI members (90. percent) and some to GRS (9.6 percent).

66 Figure 6.: Mode of Application N=0,89 Sarpanch/ Member contacted us for registration Applied for it.7 Through a door todoor survey conducted by GP.6 Any Other The process of card making was smooth for many but few had to pay convenience charges also. Out of total sampled households (of 0,89) 98.6 percent said that they did not give any payments to anyone to get these job cards made and percent said that they did not pay any amount for photos also. All job cards are supposed to have a photograph of the Head of the household and as per the guidelines, the charges of the photograph has to be borne from the administrative cost of the programme and nothing is to be charged from the household. When the same aspect was enquired from the job card holders, 8 households (. percent) said that they had to pay some amount for card making and three percent said that they paid for photographs only. On further enquiry, it was found that 96 households ( percent of 8) paid amount somewhere between Rs.-, households had paid between Rs.6-0 and another 89 households had paid between Rs. -00 as convenience charges for card making. Rest 0 households had paid between Rs.0-,000. The maximum number of such cases was reported from the state of Rajasthan where households paid some charges for the job card. The details may be seen at Table 6. in Annexure. Interestingly, when Gram Panchayat representatives were asked whether some amount was charged from villagers for making of job cards,.6 percent (9) did report that they charged some amount from villagers. This seems to be strange as almost all the beneficiaries denied giving any money but a large proportion of Sarpanch/PRI members had accepted receiving the same. It may be due to fear of losing wages among wage seekers due to which they did not disclose this whereas Sarpanch / PRI members might not be aware that they are not supposed to take any money even for photographs etc. and they openly accepted receiving money before making of job card. 6

67 6. Time taken to issue the job cards The job cards were generally made hassle free except for few cases, and cards were issued between 7- days. The state wise details have been given in Figure 6.. At all India level, percent of the sampled households got their job cards within a week and another forty two percent got within two weeks. The states of West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Meghalaya and Himachal Pradesh have been quite prompt in issuing the cards. They have taken less than a week to deliver the cards. Where the cards have not been delivered in days, operational delays were cited as the main reason. The Table 6. in Annexure presents reasons. Figure 6.: Time taken to issue a Job Card by State When this data was analysed by various groups, the figures remains same more or less. The cards were generally made between 7 to days across the groups. It may be seen at Figure 6.., 7. percent of the minority households were lucky to get the job card within a week. percent of the SC households got within a week. 7

68 Figure 6.: Time taken to receive job cards by various groups (in %) Other castes.. ST SC Same Day Within a Week Minorities.. Within weeks Hindus Custodian of the Job Cards Ideally, job cards should be in the custody of the households. There have been instances in the past, where it was found that Sarpanch or local contractor took away their job cards. But, in this study, it was found that 89.7 percent of households had job cards in their custody at the time of survey. Around six percent households reported that the job card was with Sarpanch and one percent (i.e. 7 households) said that their job card was with GRS for some updating. The contractors had job cards of.7 percent i.e. 68 households. In Kerala, all except one household had the job cards with them at the time of survey. Please refer Table 6. in Annexure Figure 6.: Custodian of Job Cards (in %) Self Sarpanch Contractor of the N= 0,89 village GRS Mate Others Outside contractor When this data was analysed viz a viz various groups, the picture was quite similar to the national average. The maximum numbers of households had job cards with them. Among religious groups, more Hindu households had cards in their possession than minority households. The female headed households were more in possession of the job card than male headed households. The details may be seen at Table 6. below 8

69 Table 6.: Custody of Job cards (various groups, in percentage) Other Male Female Hindus Minorities SC ST castes headed HHs headed HHs Self Sarpanch Contractor of the village Outside Contractor Mate GRS Others Issuance of Duplicate Job Cards At the time of survey, it was found that about households had lost their job cards, and out of these only 7 applied for duplicate cards. Nineteen households got their duplicate cards issued in due course of time. Those who did not apply cited that it would be cumbersome to apply for the duplicate card. 9

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71 Chapter - 7 EMPLOYMENT The objective of the programme is to provide employment in the lean season or whenever there is a demand for the same. In this chapter, the whole process of demand generation, provision of employment, facilities on the worksite and related issues have been discussed. This chapter talks about whether the programme has been able to provide employment during lean season. 7. Demand of Work About 79. percent of the sampled households demanded work under the programme. Different households in different villages have asked for work in different ways. Some of them had asked orally and some had asked by submitting a written application. Some have demanded in groups and some have represented themselves alone. The way the sampled households have demanded work has been discussed in this chapter. Figure 7. clearly shows that a large proportion (7. percent) of people has demanded work orally, and they prefer to go individually rather than in groups Figure 7.: Mode of Application (in %) Orally individually Orally in group Written N=0,89 individually Written jointly As per MGNREGA guidelines, when people demand work, they should be provided with a receipt mentioning the date of receiving demand. This receipt makes the persons/ households liable for unemployment allowance, in case the employment is not provided within fifteen days. At times, it becomes difficult for daily/casual labour to get any employment during lean season, and then they approach GP for MGNREGA work. Ideally GPs should have list of approved works which can be started immediately. But, it is seen that it took some time to start the work and the main reason cited was lack of funds. It was also observed in many cases and in many areas that Gram Panchayats or GRS do not give written receipts to avoid unemployment allowance. When people demanded work, work was started after few days (or after days) but no unemployment allowance was given. 6

72 At all India level, 79. percent demanded work under MGNREGA and only. percent of these received dated receipt of their application while the rest were 6

73 given verbal assurances. Map 7. & 7. shows state wise demand for work and receiving of dated signed receipt. In Andhra Pradesh, 98 percent households had demanded work and about 8 percent got signed receipts. Tripura presents a classic case, where 96.7 percent households demanded work and of them 9 percent got dated and signed receipts too. In the state of Gujarat and Manipur, it was found that demand for work was not much. Those who demanded are very less and got dated and signed receipts. J&K, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Rajasthan, & UP are low performing states on this indicator. The details of the demand & dated receipts under MGNREGA may be seen at Table 7. in Annexure. The sampled households were categorized into Low, Middle and High Income groups in the Section. and further studied with respect to the demand for employment. It was observed that 809 (0 percent) households fall under low income group. Ideally, BPL cards should have been made of all these households, but there were 7 households (about 8. percent of the total sample), which did not have BPL cards. Of these 7 households, 8 households (6. percent of the total sample households) even applied for MGNREGA work, which means that they were in real need and MGNREGA seemed to them as a ray of hope. Please refer to the Table 7. below. Table 7.: Number of households (falling under different groups of wealth) demanded employment Low Income Group Middle Income Group High Income Group Households demanded employment Households did not demand employment Total households BPL HH % 70.8% 78.9% Other HH 8 6.% 79.79% 7 8.% Total % 9.6% % BPL HH 70 0.% % 96 7.% Other HH 7 7.7% 0.% 967.8% Total % 88.0% 60.0% BPL HH %.0% 77.89% Other HH 06 6.% 78.89% 6 8.% Total 60.0% 00.99% % Total % % % On the other hand, there were 807 households (another 0 percent of total sample households) which fall under high income group. Of them, 77 (about percent of total sample) were having BPL cards and 6 (8. percent of total sample) were not having BPL cards. Of these Other households of upper income group, 06 (6. percent of the total sample households) demanded for work and from BPL upper households, 9 (8.8 percent of total BPL households) demanded for work. 6

74 Among religious groups, 69 percent of minority households and about 8 percent of Hindu households had demanded work. Similarly when analysed among caste groups, about 66 percent Scheduled Tribes households had demanded work (Please refer table 7.). MGNREGA has been there for all the willing families, whether they are BPL or belong to any group. Everyone has an easy access to the programme, as it is being implemented at the village level. Table 7.: Demand of work analysed across the groups Groups Demanded work Hindus 8.8 Minorities 69. SC 8.7 ST 6.8 Other castes 8.6 Male headed HHs 79. Female headed HHs Time taken to get the last employment Whenever a household demands the work, they should get the work within days. It was found from the survey that around 86 percent of the households got their last employment within fifteen days. About.8 percent households got after days, which defeated the purpose of the programme. When people demand, they are already in need of employment, so work should be provided on an urgent basis. The promptness of the states to provide employment within days is presented below: 6

75 It is clear from Map-7. that states of Sikkim, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Odisha, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura have performed quite well on this indicator. Punjab was not been able to provide employment within days to a large number of people. It took more than a month to provide employment to about percent of the households. The state wise data for time taken to get employment is given in table 7. in annexure. 7. Reasons for not getting work on time States vary in their situations and conditions, but the prime reason, reportedly, for not getting employment on time remains the same for most of them which is lack of funds and lack of planning. At times, local politics is also contributory factor hindering the reach of work to needy persons. An all India chart is presented below showing different reasons Figure 7.: Reasons for delay in getting work (in %) N=,7 Lack of funds Lack of planning Others, Specify Villagers not interested Operational delays Sufficient Local politics demand to start work was not there Fighting between villagers 7. Reasons for not demanding work under MGNREGA Those who did not demand work under MGNREGA cited less wages as the main reason and not willing as the second most common reason. In Chhattisgarh, all those who did not demand work expressed unwillingness to work under this programme. In Kerala also, households mentioned this as the main reason though the number of such households was less. In Mizoram, less -wages was cited as the main reason. The state wise data for reasons for not demanding work is given in Table 7. in Annexure. The reasons for not demanding work has been presented graphically in Figure Figure 7.: Reasons for not demanding work under MGNREGA (in %) 6 t willing 9 Discouraged by PRI members Discouraged by the government officials 0 Wage rates are less Corruption in wage disbursement 6

76 7. Households got the employment without demanding the work The programme is demand driven which means that whenever a person will demand work, he or she will be provided with employment opportunities. But in this study, it emerged that there were few households who have worked under MGNREGA without any formal demand for employment. When it was further explored, it came out that this was a general practice prevalent across many states. The works were not implemented as envisaged in the guidelines i.e. first demand and then delivery. Actually, whenever implementing agency (GP etc.) got fund, only then they start the work and hence at that time, villagers are informed about availability of work. Willing persons, who may have demanded or not demanded work earlier, had turned up on the day of commencement of work. So, out of those who did not demand work,. percent households still got the employment. State s performance in providing employment without demand has been presented in Map 7.. Andhra, Sikkim, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, Tripura has been fair enough in not providing work to those not applying/demanding. 7.6 Facilities on the Worksite It is mentioned in the guidelines of the MGNREGA that basic facilities should be provided to the workers at the worksite. There should be provisions for drinking water, first aid, shade and crèche/ Aaya/ care taker. 66

77 Drinking water - At all India level, 87. percent respondents said that drinking water was available on the site, almost all the GPs had arranged for drinking water except in the state of J&K where only / th of the respondents, reportedly, had drinking water facility at the worksite. This could be because of weather conditions. The details of state wise responses for on- site facilities are given in Table 7. in Annexure. First Aid kit This should be available on the site, as accidents can happen anytime. At all India level percent respondents reported about availability of first aid kits on the site. In J&K, almost none reported about this, in Punjab also it was limited to just few ( percent). Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Uttar Pradesh and Assam also did not perform well on this. Goa (9 percent), Odisha (9 percent), Jharkhand (9 percent), West Bengal (9 percent), Kerala (96 percent) and Andhra Pradesh (98 percent) performed quite well as they had arranged for first aid facilities on the site. Creche/Aaya/care-taker - It is given in the guidelines that crèche/aaya facility is to be provided by the implementing agency on worksites to take care of the small children while their mothers are doing labour. It is a well thought provision, which should be provided everywhere and should be set as an example for non- government works also. But, it was observed that, at all India level nearly one-fifth of the respondents said that such facility was available on the worksite. In J&K, none reported so. In Punjab, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Assam, Uttarakhand, Nagaland, Himachal Pradesh and Manipur less than 0 percent respondents reported to have seen this facility. In rest of the states also, compliance on this provision is not appreciable though, it was something which would have given women labour some comfort and motivation to work harder. The provision of providing shades to the workers was again a well thought of measure. MGNREGA as a programme has provided protection to the workers by providing shades to 9 percent of households at all India level 7.7 Ownership of Work Equipment The tools like spade, axe, pick, etc. are used for all kinds of earth work. So, generally, workers are required to carry these tools along for the work. If they don t have tools, then alternative arrangements should be made for the same. It was found that 86 percent of the household respondents carried their own tools to work. Those who did not own such tools, had to borrow from the Sarpanch/ GRS/ or from any other source. Few (about percent) had to even pay some user charges ranging from Rs. to Rs.0 for borrowing those tools. The details of the state wise responses may be seen at Table 7. in Annexure. 7.8 General information about the last three works It was neither appropriate to take information of one work to assess the various norms linked to works under MGNREGA guidelines nor it was possible to take 67

78 information on all the works of the households who participated in MGNREGA in the past 8-0 years. Therefore, last three works and members of the households who have participated have been listed and assessed for few important aspects of the work. Moreover, to minimize the errors in reporting due to forgetfulness also, the survey focused on last three works in which the households have worked in, to get the correct information on various aspects of the work. Majority of respondents of the households got works related to Rural Connectivity and Water Conservation. Though the card was made for all adult members willing to work under the programme, but in actuality it was found that only one or two persons worked from each household. In 6 percent of the sampled households, only one person had gone to work and in another 0 percent of the households, two persons had gone to work during their last three works. These works have been termed as work, work and work. The details of the responses may be seen at Table 7.6. to 7.6. in Annexure. Timings of the work It came out from the survey that timings of the works were not limited to the lean period of the area. It was as and when funds arrived or need arose. The onset of works has been spread across the year. Around 7 percent of the households have worked in May, 6 percent in June and percent in April. Rest have worked as and when work has started. The details may be seen in Table 7.7. to 7.7. in Annexure. Job Offer The job offer was generally made by the Sarpanch of the Village. In survey also, it was found that percent of the households got job offer from the Sarpanch followed by the Mate/ Supervisor, which is quite surprising. Then, GRS was the third person to offer them the job. The details may be seen at Table 7.8. to 7.8. in Annexure. Supervision- It was mainly mate, who was responsible for doing supervision of the works. Sarpanch has also supervised in some of the cases. About 7 percent household respondents said that Junior Engineer had done the final measurement. The details may be seen in Table 7.9 and 7.0 in Annexure. Assets- About.7 percent households said that the works in which they had worked was of good quality, about 8 percent households said that works were of very good quality and just 9 percent said that works were of excellent quality. Very few people opined that works in which they had worked was of poor quality. About percent households said that assets created under MGNREGA are useful and percent respondents said that the created assets were useful to some extent. The works they had worked in were mostly completed, and few were abandoned and ongoing. About 96.6 percent respondents said that no contractors were involved in the MGNREGA works, in 68

79 which they had worked. Details may be seen in Tables 7. and 7. in Annexure. 7.9 Employment in Peak and Lean period of the year The households were asked about the wage employment days in the last one year of the survey. The sampled households worked for an average of.9 days on wage employment. Out of which approximately, 6 percent was from non-government or private works and around percent of person days were from MGNREGA works. The sampled households had got wage employment in lean period from MGNREGA and private works also, and the contribution of MGNREGA was approximately 9 percent. Among the total work-days generated in MGNREGA works (of both peak and lean season), just less than half (9.7 percent) of the total work days were generated in lean period. This implies that more than half of the work-days were generated in peak period. It seems that the provision of employment in lean period was not strictly adhered to. The programme has been helpful to the sampled households in the state of Sikkim, where 70. percent of the work-days generated under MGNREGA were in the lean period. It indicates that timing of the work was matched quite well. Similarly, in the states of Odisha, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar and Tripura, the work days generated under MGNREGA during lean period were more than 60 percent of the total MGNREGA works. In Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Haryana work- days generated in lean period under MGNREGA were less than percent, which means more works were undertaken in peak period of the year. Please refer Table 7. in Annexure. There was not been much difference in the wages during peak and lean periods. It has remained more or less the same. 69

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81 WAGES AND TRANSACTIONS Attendance is an important aspect of the wages and the programme. When a person works, his/her attendance is duly marked and wages are paid accordingly. It is at this time when any possible manipulations are done. Sometimes, attendance is not marked, and if marked, it is on some improper register. This all makes the process quite vague, which paves ways for further manipulations. Therefore, it was considered important to understand the process of attendance and wages during this survey. 8. Maintenance of Attendance Chapter - 8 In the survey, it was found that attendance was maintained on the worksite in different formats. At all India level, 6 percent respondents reported that attendance was maintained on attendance register, another 7 percent reported that muster roll was used to record the attendance and 6 percent of the households said that attendance was registered on a plain sheet of random paper. The state of Andhra Pradesh, however, stands out in doing a good job of maintaining the attendance directly on the muster rolls. Even in Kerala, Sikkim, Himachal and West Bengal, people reported that muster rolls were being used to maintain the attendance. In Manipur, Himachal and Meghalaya, the plain white paper was, reportedly, the most commonly used method of recording the attendance, which obviously has lot of potential for manipulations. The way attendance is maintained in different states, as reported by households, has been presented in Figure 8. below and further details may be seen in Table 8. in Annexure. Figure 8.: Attendance maintenance on the work site (in %) 7

82 When questioned regarding the signing of attendance, at all India level, about 70 percent respondents reported that they always signed their attendance, while 8.8 percent, reportedly, signed sometimes and nearly /0 th had never signed their attendance. In West Bengal, 97.7 percent households signed their attendance. As can be seen from the Figure 8., people in Sikkim, Odisha, Kerala, Mizoram and in other states also, do mark their attendance. In contrast to this, there were 7. percent people in J&K who had never marked their attendance. In Rajasthan, there were mixed responses, 9 percent always signed, percent signed sometimes and about 7 percent never signed. Please see Table 8. in Annexure. When analysis was done considering various social groups about signing their attendance, it was found that more minority households have signed always than national average and Hindu households have percentage less than the national average. Similarly, among caste groups, ST households have signed more than the national average. It may be due to the fact that programme implementation in these areas is more structured. Female headed household have signed more than male headed households. It is to be noted that there were about percent of the Scheduled Caste households who have never signed their attendance. Please see Table 8. for reference. Table - 8.: Distribution of various groups on the basis of signing for attendance Hindus Minorities SC ST Other castes Male headed HHs Female headed HHs, always Sometimes Never Total Figure 8.: Proportion of workers signed for their attendance (in %) 7

83 About 7 percent household respondents said that muster rolls are maintained on the worksite to record the details. Those who did not find muster rolls on the worksite said that generally details are maintained on register or on plain paper. Please refer Table 8.. and 8.. in Annexure for state wise details. In MGNREGA, beneficiaries have provision to check the muster rolls in case they desire to. percent sampled households, reportedly, checked the muster rolls. Rest did not check, as most of them were illiterate and probably had no understanding capacities. In some such cases they were not provided at all to check the details. This data has been presented in Figure 8.. Figure 8.: Reasons for not checking Muster Rolls (in %) Illiterate N= 8,08.9 Muster roll not provided 0. Muster roll in other language.0 Any other (Specify) In-spite of the fact that the households are in dire need of employment (under MGNREGA) yet,76 (8. percent) did decline to take up any labour work. On further probing the reasons, it was found that they were either not well, or work place was too far and it to deterred them to reach there on a daily basis. Some respondents even reported that they were getting better wages from other works during that time. These reasons have been presented graphically in Figure Was not well at that time N=,76 Figure 8.: Reasons for declining the job offer (in %). Work place was very far 8. Got better wage rate somewhere else 6. Did not like the work.7 Others 7

84 8. Unemployment Allowance In order to ensure that the employment is provided within stipulated timeframe of days of receiving request/application for work, a clause has been enshrined in the program guidelines for the implementing agency that unemployment allowance is to be provided to the households not receiving employment within days of receiving request for work. It has been envisaged in the guidelines that this payment has to be borne by the state government. After analysing the qualitative and quantitative data, it emerged that all kind of manipulations were done at the time of receiving of request for employment by concern authorities to avoid any kind of unemployment allowance. There were some households who demanded employment and they got the work opportunities also but after days or so. They did not get the unemployment allowance. It was observed that there were few households (0.8 percent i.e. households of 78 eligible households), who had received unemployment allowance. State-wise responses on this aspect have been presented in Table 8. in Annexure. At the time of listing of households, questions about receiving of unemployment allowance were also asked, and whether they have received any such allowance in last six months of the survey.. percent of 90 eligible households have responded in affirmative. (Refer Table. in Annexure ). 8. Travel allowance If a person travels more than kms from his/her village for MGNREGA work, then he / she is entitled for additional wages of 0 percent as per the provision under MGNREGA. There were, (8.6 percent) respondent households, who had to travel more than kms for the MGNREGA work. Out of these,,7 ( percent) got additional wages. Majority of those who travelled far and did not get additional wages expressed unawareness of this provision. Some reported that even Panchayats was also not aware of this provision. The state wise data on this aspect can be seen in Table 8.. and Table 8.. in Annexure. 8. Wages Generally, payments are calculated on piece meal basis, and then wage slips are prepared on the basis of work done by the individuals. It was observed in the villages and information was shared by the respondents that rates were fixed according to the dimensions of the land. So, if two persons were working on same land and their capacities are different such as in case of digging or carrying, then their payments would vary. Classification of the work has happened on the basis of gender. Women were given less heavy work and the works requiring more physical strength were given to men, which leads to difference in payments in some states. The less physical strength of women has sociological and economic reasons behind it, and same applies to disabled persons. Their strength may vary but they need to be supported, therefore, this programme was launched and had an all inclusive approach to it. 7

85 It was seen from the survey findings that wage slips are not given to all the workers. Just 0.8 percent of the workers have received it in the last year, rest did not. The wages received in the last one year also varied from state to state. This is because all the states are expected to frame their own wage rates according to their state labour laws. Despite this variation, maximum (0.6 percent) people receivedt wages in the range of Rs.6-0 per day, another 9 percent received average wages in the range of Rs.- Rs.00. The wage rates appeared to be higher in the states of Haryana, Goa and Manipur, Punjab and Kerala; therefore, many people (Haryana- 6.6 percent, Manipur-. percent, Goa- percent) in these states got wages in the range of Rs.0-0 per day. It was 99 percent in Kerala, 7 percent in Goa, and 67 percent in Punjab got in the range of Rs Figure 8. shows all India level distribution of wages per day. The detailed state wise variation of average wage rate received in last one year has been presented in Table 8.6 in Annexure-. Figure 8.: Distribution of per day wage rates (in %) N=9, < >0 Wage Rates in INR 8. Bank Accounts To prevent and stop siphoning of wages of the labourers, several measures have been taken by the Government. One of them is to provide them the payment through bank accounts. MGNREGA also stresses on transferring payments through bank accounts. Therefore, about 90 percent (of 006 households) of the respondents opened the new bank accounts (refer Map 8. for state wise details) after the roll out of this programme. About eighty six percent among scheduled tribe households and 87. percent minority households had opened their bank accounts, which is less than national average of 90 percent. Other castes have percentage more than national average, which means more people from other castes have opened bank accounts (refer table 8.). Usually these accounts were opened in the name of the male members of the household. In about 7 percent of the cases (of 60 households who opened accounts), joint accounts were opened and in another percent of the cases, accounts were opened in the name of the female member of the households (refer Map 8. for state wise details). Similar results were found when religion wise and caste wise analysed. All these groups have percentage less than 7

86 national average which means that accounts are fewer in the names of the women of the house. But when female headed houses were questioned, it was found that accounts were in women s name in just 6 percent of the households. There also, in 0 percent of households, accounts were in name of males and in another percent had joint accounts. In Kerala, maximum number of female accounts was opened. In other states, larger proportion of the accounts has been opened in the name of males of the household. In majority of the households of Sikkim, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, bank accounts of all the members of the households were opened. The statewise details of bank accounts have been presented in Table 8.7 in Annexure. Table - 8.: Percentage of Households opened bank accounts - Group wise Opened Bank account Hindus Minorities SC ST Other castes Male headed HHs Female headed HHs Table 8.: Bank Account Name (Group wise, in percentage) Hindus Minorities SC ST Other castes Male headed HHs Female headed HHs Female member of HH Joint account Only husband/ male member All Member of HH Total

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88 It was heartening to observe that 7 percent did not face any problems in opening the bank accounts, in about 9 percent of the households, respondents faced some problem. Other details have been presented in the Figure 8.7. Figure 8.7: Problems faced in opening the bank accounts (in %) Did not face any problem Delay and multiple visits Documentation regarding Post office/bank far away Deposit regarding Any other reason 8.6 Modes of Bank payment transfer As it can be seen from the Figure 8.8 below, payments are generally made either through bank accounts or through post office accounts across the states. In some cases (.7 percent), it was provided in cash. It is found that the cash was given with proper verification on the checking the genuineness of the worker. Majority of the cash payment was made by banking correspondents through biomarkers, nearly / th of the cash payment was given after verification of signatures and in rest of the cases, cash payment was given in presence of GP members. The mode of payment was found similar across the religion and caste groups. 78

89 In the state of Andhra Pradesh, banking correspondents, reportedly, provided payments to the beneficiaries. Such banking correspondents were also found in Maharashtra, Tripura, and in few other states. Those cases may be the GPs are experimenting with this new mode of transferring money. The state wise details of modes of transfer may be seen in Table 8.8 in Annexure. 8.7 Time taken to receive the wages As this programme is meant for daily wage seekers, the payments should be made to them at the earliest; therefore, it is envisaged in the guidelines that payment should not exceed fifteen days. Below is the Figure 8.0, depicting average time taken in receiving wages by different households in different states. In all of India, about percent of households received wages within weeks and another 6 percent received wages in three weeks. It is to be noted that there were about 9. percent households, who had received the wages after a month. In West Bengal, majority of people received payments in three weeks. The detailed data on this aspect may be seen in Table 8.9 in Annexure. It may be further seen at the table 8. that 68 percent of minority households and ST households have received payment within two weeks, which is quite higher than the national average. The situation among SC households and other castes is below than the national average. Figure 8.0: Average time taken to get the wage payment 79

90 Table 8.: Time taken to receive wages by different groups (in%) Hindus Minorities SC ST Other castes Male headed HHs Female headed HHs Within weeks Within weeks Within weeks More than a month idea Total Equal wages to Men and Women About 9 percent of the households claimed that men and women received equal wages, which may be due to the concept of payment being linked to the amount of work done. But, still it is acting as an equalizer in many Gram Panchayats. 80

91 Chapter - 9 IMPACT OF MGNREGA For evaluating any welfare scheme of the Government of India (GOI), it is imperative to know whether scheme has really provided benefit to the intended target group or not. In order to know the impact of the programme, various questions pertaining to socio-economic impact of the programme were asked to capture the perceptions of the people. Since, the programme is being implemented in all the districts of India; it was not possible to have a control group to measure the change due to MGNREGA. Therefore, it was decided to consider those households who have got less than days of employment in a year as a control group. Households who got more than 7 days of employment in a year were considered as program group. A detailed comparison of various socio-economic indicators between program and control groups has been done in the study to measure the impact of MGNREGA. 9. Impact on Employment and Migration As MGNREGA is a demand driven employment generation programme, which provides work in distress situations, it was important to know the experience of the people with respect to employment and migration. Three out of people (6 percent) reported that it has impacted in increasing the wage rate, 66 percent reported it has provided employment opportunities, 6 percent opined that it reduced seasonal migration, whereas nearly / rd believed that it was reversing the process of migration. Figure 9.- Impact on Employment and Migration (. of days of employed) Improving the employment opportunities during lean season Reducing distress/seasonal migration. 9. Bringing back people in villages Increasing the wage rates Got employment under MGNREGA for < days in the last years (N=867) Got employment under MGNREGA for >7 days in the last years (N=907) 8

92 It is visible that those who got employment for more number of days gave more favourable response for the programme, like 6 percent of people who got employment for more number of days reported that it did help in reducing the seasonal migration, while just 0 percent of those who got employment for lesser period reported that it reduced seasonal migration. There seems to be difference between the opinion of those who worked more than who worked less. Similarly, there seems to be a significant impact on the indicators of Bringing back people to villages and increasing the wage rates Figure 9. (a)-status of migration for work (in %) 0. Earlier migrated during lean season for work 7. w migrating during lean season for work The impact of migration was studied on sampled households in detail. As shown in the Figure 9.(a), members of 0. percent households, reportedly, migrated in the lean agriculture season and now after MGNREGA,. percent households had stopped migrating. These households were getting employment opportunities in and around villages at satisfactory wage rates, therefore they were not choosing migration as an option. The difference in reduction of migration from 0. percent to 7. percent is statistically significant at 99 percent level of confidence. It can be seen that the duration of long term migration has also decreased as seen in Figure 9.. The situation of migration was studied in detail for the different religion and caste groups. It may be inferred from the data that MGNREGA has not been able to check or impact migration in households belonging to minorities and scheduled tribes. In-fact, migration has increased a bit in the case of minority households. There was a change in migration status of scheduled castes, now.6 percent less households migrate during the lean season Figure 9.(b): Status of migration of households of various groups Before w Hindus Minorities SC ST Other castes Male Female headed HHs headed HHs 8

93 Figure 9.-Duration of migration for work One month or less About months About to 6 months Earlier (N:899) w (N:690) Earlier members of.7 percent households, reportedly, migrated for longer duration ranging from -6 months, but recently members of only 6 percent households migrated for such longer duration. The duration of stay has reduced from three or more months to probably to two months. One month duration has also reduced. The trend is depicted in Figure 9.. Differences observed between recent and earlier migration has been presented in Figure 9. are statistical significant at 99 percent confidence interval. 9. Perception about Created Assets People reported that MGNREGA has helped in developing approach roads and other useful assets of good quality. They were not satisfied with the improvement related to drinking water facilities, simply because not much work has been done in this area under the programme. The state wise figures of perception of people about created assets are shown in Table 9. in Annexure. But, there was difference observed in the opinion of those who received average employment days for more than 7 days and less than days per annum. It may be seen clearly from the Figure 9. that those who have worked more than 7 days in the project have more positive perception than those who have worked less than days Figure 9.: Perception about works / Created Assets Development of approach roads Creation of Useful assets Creation Good quality assets 8.8. Improved drinking water facility Got Avg. employment under MGNREGA for < days in the last years (N=867) Got Avg. employment under MGNREGA for >7 days in the last years (N= 907) 8

94 9. Impact on Marginalized sections This programme envisages employment mostly within the villages or its near-by areas. It is providing works to the needy people and thus, the marginalized sections of the society are expected to benefit from it. More than half of the people had the perception that it did create employment opportunities for them, as a result of which many were able to reduce their family debts. Similarly, a little over than half of the sampled population thought that with the help of the earnings from MGNREGA works, families were able to reduce their family debts. The objective of the programme is also related to providing food security to families at large, but 66 percent of the families think that MGNREGA was not been able to provide such security. When we compare the opinion of those who got more and less number of days of employment, a significant difference in opinion is observed. About 60 percent of families who worked less and 7 percent of those who worked more felt that food security was not provided by the programme. Figure 9.: Perception about Socio-economic Changes Has improved the financial status of BPL families Has brought better Has led to reduction work and wage of family debts opportunities for SCs and STs Participation of poor people in the village decision making MGNREGA has been able to provide food during the lean season Got employment under MGNREGA for < days in the last years (N=867) Got employment under MGNREGA for >7 days in the last years (N=907) The difference in perception of these two groups is evident from the data presented in Figure 9. and state wise difference can be seen in Table 9. of Annexure-. 9. Loan and Repayments The impact of MGNREGA was studied on loans and its repayments rigorously and it was found that 8. percent of the sampled households did not take any loan in the last three years. The credit may be given to the programme, as it has been able to provide some respite during hard times. But, there were 8. percent families who had to take loan to address their needs. 8

95 It may be further seen that with the help of MGNREGA earnings, these households were able to repay their loan also. There were about 0 percent of families who have repaid their total loan and another percent have repaid more than 7 percent of loan. Rest of the households were confident that if the programme continued like this, they would be able to save and repay the loans. MGNREGA has been able to help about percent of the households to repay the old loans taken three years back. The status of loan repayment of old loans has been presented in Figure 9.9. About eight percent families, reportedly, had to wrok hard for repaying their old loans, 66 percent had already repaid the old loans and rest 6 percent were also doing their best to repay the dues. 9. Food Security There were about 9 percent of the households who had sufficient food supply throughout the year. Out of these, 80.8 percent had sufficient supply of food earlier also. But there was a change in the availability of food grains as found in. percent of the households. These households did not have sufficient food supply earlier but recently, with the help of the MGNREGA works, they were able to manage sufficient food for their families. 8

96 Availability of sufficient food Earlier (in %) Availability of sufficient food w (in %) Impact on Women People perceived that there has been positive impact on women because of this programme. They were, reportedly, getting employment in the village, which was giving them with wages at par with men. This has given them confidence, and they are, reportedly, becoming more financially independent. This change in approach to work, like stress on output than on timings and making worksite more friendly, has given them confidence to take up the works and do justice to it Figure 9.0:Perception about impact on women (in%) Women are paid equal to men employment opportunities have increased for women in the village Women are becoming more financially independent as they have an earning and has a bank account also Women are participating more in the household and community decisions Stress on output than to work timings has made members/ women more comfortable Able to stop the migration of female workforce to urban areas Got employment under MGNREGA for < days in the last years (N=867) Got employment under MGNREGA for >7 days in the last years (N=907) Onsite facilities has made women more concentrated on site work Figure 9.0 clearly shows that the people who got employment for more number of days were quite positive on all indicators, in comparison to, those who got employment for less than days. 9.7 Impact on Agriculture People s perception was that the surface water of the village improved due to various works taken under MGNREGA. Many people felt that ground water also improved and thus, cultivated land had increased. But, there appeared to be very unsatisfactory changes in irrigated land, increased agriculture production 86

97 and availability of fodder at the village level. It appears quite contradictory that people thought that cultivated land has increased through MGNREGA but they felt that it did not result in improving agriculture produce. There seems a need for convergence of more programmes at the ground level to enhance agriculture productivity. FIgure 9. :Perception about impact on Agriculture at the village level (in %) Surface water Ground Water Cultivated land. 9.7 Irrigated land Increase in agriculture production Availability of fodder 9.9. positive impact at the village level Got employment under MGNREGA for < days in the last years (N=867) Got employment under MGNREGA for >7 days in the last years (N=907).7.8 Others Sampled households perceived that there have been some positive changes at the household level, too. There was more employment opportunities available for the households in agriculture, majority of them felt that people were using more cash crops and about half of the households perceived that there has been an increase in the cropping area. Overall, there were 8- percent respondents who felt that there was positive impact at the household level Figure 9.: Perception about Impact on agriculture at the household level More employment in agriculture More use of cash crop.0 0. Increase in cropping area positive impact at the household level Got employment under MGNREGA for < days in the last years (N=867) Got employment under MGNREGA for >7 days in the last years (N=907).9. Others 87

98 9.8 Use of Earned Money The maximum amount a household can earn from MGNREGA is around Rs in a year (@ Rs.0 per day for 00 days Rs.0 per day for 00 days). This is in addition to what they usually earn in a year. It was observed that they generally used this money for Food/Household consumption (9.6 percent), buy clothes (88.8 percent) or on health care of the family members (8. percent). As the maximum utilization of the earned wages was on food/household consumption, it can be concluded that the programme has helped people to get - times meal when they are in dire need of food. Figure 9.: Use of money earned under MGNREGA Use it for recreation purposes To purchase / repairing of pump sets/ tube To improve the water supply for household Use it for income generating assets New constn. in the house Purchase of consumer goods like Radio/ TV/ etc. For consumption of Alcohol, Tobacco, etc To repay debt Maintenance of House Social Obligations Edu. Of Children Health Buy clothes Food/HH Consumption Sixty three percent of the households spend it on education of children also. 6 percent had used it to repay their old debts. 7 percent was, reportedly, used for purchasing income generating assets. Very few people had spent it on recreational activities. 9.9 Preference of MGNREGA Work In order to know the employment preference of the people between MGNREGA and n-mgnrega works under different situations, questions were framed and asked from every household. These questions were: If you have a choice of MGNREGA and non- MGNREGA work within the village, where would you prefer to work? If you have a choice of MGNREGA and non- MGNREGA work beyond kms of the village, where would you prefer to work? If you have a choice of MGNREGA work outside village and non- MGNREGA work within the village, where would you prefer to work? 88

99 If you have a choice of MGNREGA work within the village and non- MGNREGA work outside the village, where would you prefer to work? In addition to this, reason of choosing MGNREGA or n-mgnrega work was also asked. These reasons were:. Better Wages. Flexible Timings. Option for whole family to work in. Timely Payments. Other Reason Responses on each of these questions were analysed. The findings which emerged on the same have been described in subsequent paragraphs When the people were asked the st questions i.e. whether they would prefer to work in MGNREGA works or n-mgnrega works, in case both type of the works were provided within their village, a large proportion (7.9 percent) of people showed their interest to work in MGNREGA works than in non-mgnrega works. Similarly, Figure 9. clearly reveals that in the remaining situations, people preferred MGNREGA work than n-mgnrega works. A gap of around percent points observed in case of availability of employment in n-mgnrega works within village and MGNREGA works outside village whereas this gap is more than 0 percent points in other situations. It indicates that employment under MGNREGA works was the first choice of majority of the people. 89

100 When asked about the reasons of choosing employment under MGNREGA than n-mgnrega in all the above four situations, top three reasons mentioned were- better wages followed by flexible timings and timely payments Please refer Figure 9.. When compared female headed households with male headed households, not much variation was observed regarding preference of MGNREGA versus n- MGNREGA works under different situations. Figure 9.6 clearly shows the same. Figure 9.6: MGNREGA & n-mgnrega works preference by Gender 90

101 Hence, it may be concluded that people preferred MGNREGA works than any other works. However, whatever problems they faced, they had trust that their wages were secured because it was a government programme. w, it s the responsibility of the government to maintain this trust and confidence and strengthen the programme to its fullest. 9.0 Perception of different stakeholders about various socio-economic changes that happened due to MGNREGA Key stakeholders of MGNREGA are household members, Mate, GRS, GP members, Block and district officials. During survey, a set of same questions were asked from each stakeholder to gauge their perception about various socioeconomic indicators. Reason of asking same set of questions from every stakeholder across country was that if majority of the stakeholders perceived that there was a positive change on a particular indicator due to MGNREGA, it could be safely assumed that the change was due to MGNREGA and vice versa. All the stakeholders shared their opinion about the impact of this programme on the lives of the rural people. The following is their perception about the impact of the programme on the important indicators. Figure 9.7: Perception of different stakeholders viz a viz employment and migration (in %) HH Mate GRS GP Block District Improving the employment opportunities during lean season Reducing distress/seasonal migration Bringing back people in villages Increasing the wage rates 9.0. Employment and Migration Figure 9.7 clearly reveals that all the stakeholders perceived that MGNREGA has improved employment opportunities for rural people during lean season. The block and district level officials had more positive approach towards the programme than the household beneficiary. 9

102 The household beneficiaries felt that programme was not very effective in stopping seasonal migration. Just 6 percent of the sampled households felt that it reduced seasonal migration. But, block programme officers held contrary opinion. Seventy four percent of the Block officials thought that it was helping in reducing seasonal migration. Many district officials also thought the same.more than half of Mate, GRS and GP officials thought that it was helping in reducing the migration. Bringing People Back- Migration is a complex phenomenon. It is not only the employment which takes people away from the villages but there could be other factors like education, health, better life facilities, etc. MGNREGA may not be able to pull them back completely, as it is just providing them with few days of employment but it can definitely help in reducing the number of days of migration. About two thirds of the stakeholders felt that MGNREGA had influenced other government and non- government programmes to increase their wage rates. Block and district level officials had a more macro view of the programme, they had a wider outlook and outreach, therefore, their opinion was different from the household level Works and Assets In this section also, it may be seen that block level officials had a very positive opinion about the programme, ninety two percent block official thought that the programme was able to develop approach roads and assets created were useful for the community and were of good quality. Figure 9.8: Perception of different stakeholders viz a viz works and assets under MGNREGA (in%) HH Mate GRS GP Block District Creating useful assetts Creating good quality of assetts Developing approach roads Improving the drinking water availability Similarly, 9 percent of district officials felt that whatever assets were created or works were undertaken in the villages were useful for the community and 86 9

103 percent thought that works/ assets were of good quality. Seventy percent of Mates and seventy six percent of GRS felt that assets were useful and were of good quality. In contrast to this, just about 9 percent of the households thought that created assets were useful and of good quality. They also felt that with the help of MGNREGA, approach roads were developing in the villages. Drinking water facility:- More than half of the stakeholders felt that availability of drinking water had improved in the villages Marginalized sections When asked about the change in the situation of marginalized sections of the society and how far this programme was being able to improve the condition of the BPL/poor families, household respondents were sceptical about the contribution on this factor. They did not see this programme providing food security or regular availability of food throughout the year to rural people; they also felt that it had no role in improving the poor people s participation in decision making and also in reducing drop-out rates in schools. However, 7-80 percent of the block level officials felt that the programme has been able to provide regular food throughout the year to the rural people and in bringing village s poor people participation in the decision making. Eighty five to ninety percent of the Block level officials felt that it was bringing better work and wage opportunities for SCs and STs and therefore their financial status was also improving whereas just a little more than half of the households thought so. The households were at the receiving end therefore their opinion was important. Little more than half of them felt that it has been able to provide better opportunities to SCs and STs. Seventy one percent of the Block level officials felt that MGNREGA has been able to reduce family debts, but in case of households just half of them felt so. Figure 9.9: Perception of different stakeholders about marginalised sections (in%) HH Mate GRS GP Block District Improving the financial status of BPL families 90 8 Bringing better work and wage opportunities for SCs & STs In providing food during lean season In bringing village's poor people say in decision making In reducing dropout In reducing family rate in schools debt 9

104 9.0. Impact on Women In this section, it is seen that at the household level, respondents thought that situation of women did not improve much. Whatever changes are coming in the situation or status of women is not solely by MGNREGA. There are other contributory factors also like increase in awareness, increase in literacy level among women and other members also etc. About 60 percent of the households thought that employment opportunities had increased for women and wage rates was also becoming equal gender-wise but still women were migrating to urban areas. It did not help in enhancing their participation in planning and social audit at the community level and neither at the household level for taking decisions for the family. About 8 percent felt that women were becoming financially independent; still they felt that it was not adequate to empower them. Probably this is a slow social process and there could be other factors contributing to such perception. In contrast to the household respondents, district and block level officials thought that the programme has been able to impact the lives of women quite positively. The indicators taken for the study saw high responses from them on all the indicators. Mates, GRS and GP members too had good perception about the programme but just between -7 percent Mates, 60-7 percent GRS and 9-7 percent GP members thought on the lines of senior officials too. Figure 9.0: Perception of different stakeholders viz a viz empowerment and development of women (in%) HH Mate GRS GP Block District Women in bringing equal wage rates for men and women in govt. and non-govt. works Increasing employment opportunities for women within village Women to work because of flexible timings To stop females migration to urban areas Women to participate in planning and social audit Women to participate in household and community decisions Women for becoming more financially independent 9

105 9.0. Impact at the Village level It was observed that people felt that due to MGNREGA works the surface water and ground water has increased. It may be due to the works related to restoration and renovation of water bodies and water harvesting structures. Many people think that Land development works has led to an increase in cultivated land but has not resulted in an increase in irrigated land. It may be seen that in the sampled villages not many works was undertaken for irrigation canals. It is very clear from the figure that all the stakeholders felt that there was no increase in agriculture production and thus no increase in fodder for animals. Specific studies may be undertaken to see the impact of the programme on these indicators at the national and the state level. 80 Figure 9.: Perception of different stakeholders about water and land development indicators (in%) HH Mate GRS GP Block District Surface water Ground Water Cultivated land Irrigated land Availability of fodder Increase in agriculture production 9

106 9.0.6 Impact at the Household level It was envisaged to study the impact of the programme at the household level, and the perception of different stakeholders on how much this programme was able to impact the lives at the household level. It may be seen that maximum number of stakeholders including households thought that now, more employment opportunities were available in agriculture. The households believed that more cash crops were being used but block and district level officials held contrary perception, probably they thought that the households were doing things at a very small scale which had almost negligible impact at the macro level. About half of the stakeholders thought that there was no increase in the cropping areas at the household level. Figure 9.: Impact at the household level -Perception of different stakeholders (in%) HH Mate GRS GP Block District More use of cash crop More employment in agriculture Increase in cropping area 9. Ranking of States based on their performance An attempt has been made to assess the overall performance of the states considering various service delivery norms set by MORD under MGNREGA and perceived socio-economic impact on household because of MGNREGA. To assess the 96

107 performance of the states following key performance indicators have been considered: Sl. Indicator Proportion of household received job card within weeks / days Proportion of family members did not go out of the village for work during lean agriculture season Proportion of respondents reported having First Aid, Drinking water and Creche /Aaya /Caretaker on the work site. Proportion of respondents reported maintenance of attendance on the worksite either on attendance register and/or muster roll Proportion of households got unemployment allowance if the employment was not provided with days of application 6 Proportion of respondents reported that men and women paid equal wages for same quantum of work 7 Proportion of households reported having job cards in their custody. 8 Proportion of workers always signed for their attendance 9 Proportion of household received payments within weeks 0 Proportion of households reported that Rozgar Diwas (Employment Guarantee Day) had been organised in their GP. Proportion of households reported that complaint register is available at GP office. Proportion of households reported that complaints has been disposed within days. Proportion of households reported availability of grievance redressal helpline in their state. Proportion of respondents agreed completely or to a great extent that the assets created under MGNREGA in their village/gp are useful Proportion of respondents agreed completely or to a great extent that MGNREGA has been able to provide food during the lean season 6 Proportion of respondents agreed completely or to a great extent that employment opportunities have increased for women in the village with MGNREGA 7 Proportion of respondents agreed completely or to a great extent that MGNREGA works have been able to stop the migration of female workforce to urban areas Proportion of respondents agreed completely or to a great extent that MGNREGA helped in improving the employment opportunities during lean season of agriculture Proportion of respondents agreed completely or to a great extent that distress/seasonal migration of people in search of employment especially during lean season has reduced? Proportion of respondents agreed completely or to a great extent that the people are coming back from urban areas in their village because MGNREGA helped in generating sufficient wage employment opportunities Proportion of respondents agreed completely or to a great extent that the wages provided under MGNREGA helped in increasing the wage rate in the village to the minimum wage Proportion of respondents agreed completely or to a great extent that MGNREGA has led to reduction of family debts Proportion of households worked under MGNREGA is headed by female. As the large number of indicators decreases the Confidence intervals for the estimates, method of Principal components is used to decrease the number of variables. After analysing the data, result is presented in the table below (detailed methodology to compute rank has been given in Annexure-6) 97

108 Table 9. Ranking of states on the basis of their performance under MGNREGA State Mean Score Rank Sikkim 7.9 Kerala 7. Tripura Andhra Pradesh 69. West Bengal 68.8 Bihar Jharkhand Odisha 6. 8 Karnataka 6. 9 Tamilnadu Maharashtra 6.9 Gujarat 6.68 Himachal Pradesh 6. Meghalaya 9.9 Arunachal Pradesh 8. Manipur Goa Chhattisgarh 6. 8 Assam.9 9 Nagaland.7 0 Mizoram.7 Uttar Pradesh. Madhya Pradesh. Punjab.0 Rajasthan 9.8 Haryana Uttarakhand Jammu & Kashmir.8 8 Among 8 states covered under evaluation, Sikkim ranked first followed by Kerala ( nd ) and Tripura ( rd ). Jammu & Kashmir scored the lowest rank among 8 states. 98

109 Chapter - 0 INDIVIDUAL BENEFICIARIES The objective of the programme is to provide livelihood security to the intended beneficiaries. If someone has access to private land and they are unable to develop it due to lack of resources, then MGNREGA has provisions for these families. Their private land is developed through the funds of MGNREGA and then it has multiplier effect as it provides benefits to the land owner and few others who work on the land to provide labour input. Their wages are paid by the programme. Thus, lifelong security may be provided to these families. Generally, private lands of BPL/IAY families are developed to enhance their livelihood options. The individual beneficiaries were covered in states; five states did not have any individual beneficiaries viz. Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, Goa & Punjab. 0. Profile of the Individual Beneficiaries In total,,6 individual beneficiaries were covered in states. The state-wise sample achieved under different categories has been listed below: Table 0.: State wise distribution of Individual Beneficiaries States SC/ST Land Reforms Beneficiaries IAY-BPL Total Andhra Pradesh 6(.%) (.7%) (.%) 7 Arunachal Pradesh Assam 96(8.%) (.%) (.6%) Bihar (.6%) (9.%) 7(.%) Chhattisgarh (.6%) 8(0.%) 9(7.) 78 Gujarat 99 (8.%) (0.%) 8(6.7'%) 9 Haryana (.%).60% (.%) 9 Himachal Pradesh 0(8.%) (6.%) (0.%) Jammu & Kashmir 7 6 Jharkhand 08(.%) 68(%) 0(.6%) 06 Karnataka 78(7.%) 8 (.%) 97(69%) 7 Kerala 7(%) 00(0.%) 0(6.8%) 9 Madhya Pradesh (6.%) 7(8.%) 7(.%) 88 Maharashtra (.%) 8(7.%) 0(.%) 9 Mizoram -- Odisha 6(6.%) 0(9.9%) 6(.%) 67 Rajasthan 6(.%) 8(.%) 0(.%) 0 Sikkim (60%) 0(.%) 6(8.9%) 90 Tamilnadu 67(8.9%) (.%) 77(78%) Tripura 78(7.%) (0.%) 9(7.6%) 08 99

110 Uttar Pradesh 66(8.%) 97(.%) (7.%) 8 Uttarakhand (.6%) (9.0%) 6(.%) 6 West Bengal (.%) 66(8.9%) (.9%) All India There were difficulties in finding individual beneficiaries as Sarpanch is generally not aware about them. Only GRS knew about them. As seen from the table that maximum benefits (6.7 percent) were received by the beneficiaries of IAY-BPL scheme. The first preference has been given to families falling under this category. Figure 0.: Social & Religion wise distribution of Individual beneficiaries Religion Groups Figure 0. shows social and religion wise distribution of individual beneficiaries. The distribution does not actually reflect the true representation of the proportion of social and religious groups but it gives an idea of their distribution under MGNREGA individual beneficiary scheme. Of the total individual beneficiaries covered in India from states, 8. percent were Scheduled Caste, percent were Scheduled Tribes and the rest were from other social groups. Nine out ten individual beneficiaries covered were Hindu and 8 percent were Muslims. In Jammu & Kashmir, the districts covered had maximum population of Hindus as compared to the state totals; therefore, the chart is showing more Hindus at the national level. In Mizoram, all the covered beneficiaries were Christians. 00

111 Figure 0.- Age wise distribution of the individual beneficiaries (in %) N: years 6- years 6- years 6- years 6-6 years More than 66 years N:6 9.6 Figure 0.- Education wise distribution of individual beneficiaries (in %) Illiterate < Primary Passed th Passed 8th Passed 0th Passed th Grad and above The age profile of the beneficiaries reflects that maximum people (60.7 percent) who received benefits were in the age group of 6- years. This could be because of the fact that usually younger and senior age group did not have access to the house and land. The educational profile of the individual respondents reveals that 0 percent were illiterate and if these figures are added to the categories of less than primary and fifth passed then the total becomes 66 percent. This is a huge number and reflects that lack of education was adding to their woes and these works on their private lands could help them attain some benefits Process of Application Ideally, Gram Sabha should make a list of deserving individuals likely to be benefitted under the Individual beneficiaries land development component of MGNREGA, then after due discussions and deliberations, a priority list can be prepared for the village. The below Table-0. shows different stakeholders, who were approached by above individuals. Generally, people consider Sarpanch as the nodal person for this and hence they approach him directly. There were around 0

112 percent individuals who had approached Gram Sabha directly. Some were quite forthcoming and said that they approached Programme Officer directly. About 77 percent of the beneficiaries applied in writing and rest gave oral submissions. Table 0.: Individual beneficiary application details Individual Beneficiary Applied to: Percent Sarpanch/ Member 7.6 GRS 9.7 Gram Sabha. Programme Officer. Any other.0 Mode of Application Percent Written application 77. Oral Application.8 N 6 Figure 0.- Problems faced to avail the benefits Did not face any difficulty Had to approach several time Fellow villagers were not ready to work on my land Wanted some bribe Always asking for tea and snacks during work Most of the beneficiaries did not face any problem in availing the benefit. About / th of the respondents reported that they had to approach several times and another 6 percent said that they faced problems because fellow villagers were not ready to work on their land. Another percent said that some commission was sought from them to avail the benefit. About percent people reported that fellow villagers troubled them by demanding tea and snacks during work. Convenience Fees paid by the Individual Beneficiaries- Though, this programme is run to develop livelihood opportunities for the individual land owners who are unable to do it from their own sources, still at times, few stakeholders take advantage of their situation and ask them for some fees to muster some charges. In five states, beneficiaries availed benefits without any hassles. The maximum number of beneficiaries (6. percent) paid commission in the state of West 0

113 Bengal, followed by Andhra Pradesh (.6 percent) and Himachal Pradesh (9. percent). Figure 0.- of beneficiaries paid Convenience charges (in %) Tripura Mizoram Arunachal Pradesh Haryana Jammu & Kashmir Jharkhand Kerala Assam Chhattisgarh Gujarat Karnataka Madhya Pradesh Bihar Total Tamilnadu Sikkim Uttarakhand Uttar Pradesh Rajasthan Maharashtra Odisha Himachal Pradesh Andhra Pradesh West Bengal About /0 th beneficiaries paid convenience charges in the range of Rs.,00 to,000 and another percent paid more than Rs.,000. The range of fees paid by beneficiaries is shown in the Table0. below: Table 0.: Amount of Convenience Fees paid by the beneficiaries Range percent less than above Total 0 0

114 0. Type of Benefits under the Programme Broadly, the benefits given to the individual beneficiaries may be divided in four major categories: a). Provision of irrigation facility b). Plantation c). Horticulture d). Land Development e). Any other The following chart shows the types of benefits received by individual beneficiaries in different states: Gujarat Jharkhand Arunachal Pradesh Odisha Maharashtra Mizoram Himachal Pradesh Bihar Madhya Pradesh Total Uttar Pradesh Kerala Tripura Uttarakhand West Bengal Rajasthan Chhattisgarh Karnataka Haryana Tamilnadu Andhra Pradesh Assam Sikkim Jammu & Kashmir Figure 0.6- Types of benefits under MGNREGA individual beneficiaries scheme Provision of irrigation facility Plantation Horticulture Land Development Any Other 0

115 Figure 0.6 clearly shows that individuals in the states of Gujarat, Jharkhand, and Arunachal Pradesh preferred irrigation facilities. In the states of Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Sikkim and Jammu and Kashmir, no irrigation activity was carried out. In the state of Assam, only plantation and horticulture has been carried out. In Jammu and Kashmir, Land Development activities were taken up in a big way. The state wise data on this aspect has been presented in Table 0. in Annexure. At the all India level, Land development (. percent) was the preferred activity followed by irrigation facilities (9.9 percent). In fact, there were some other activities, which had been preferred by maximum people i.e. 9. percent. The details may be found in the state reports. About 9 percent of the individual beneficiaries were satisfied with the work done on their land. But percent of the respondents had a reason for dissatisfaction. About 0 percent reported that work carried out was not good. Another 6 percent said that it was carried out for a longer period. The responses may be seen in the Table-0.. Table 0.- Reasons for dissatisfaction for the work on Private Lands Reasons N % t good 78.9 Had taken quite a long time to complete the work 8 6. Did not complete the work in one go. Did not finish full, had to wind up ourselves.7 Have spoilt other neighbouring areas. Quality of plants were not good. Any other. Total Impact of MGNREGA The benefits given under the programme has led to the enhancement of livelihood opportunities. But, the impact may be analysed on two broad indicators Irrigation Water To gauge the impact of irrigation, the simple approach of before and after was adopted. There were, households who did not have irrigation water, but with the assistance of MGNREGA, 7. percent of them, reportedly got sufficient water to cultivate crops. 0

116 Figure 0.7- Impact on Irrigation water irrigation water- Before irrigation water After Insufficient irrigation water Sufficient irrigation water.6 Ample irrigation water There were few families, which earlier had insufficient irrigation water, but after this programme they, reportedly, were able to get sufficient water on their lands. Cropping Pattern There were about 8 percent households who were not cultivating any crops earlier, now with the land development or provision of irrigation facilities, percent of them are able to take double crops and percent were able to take multiple crops and another 9 percent have started taking single cropping on their lands Figure 0.8- Impact on cropping Pattern crops - Before crops- After Single crop after benefit Double crop after benefit Multiple crops after benefit When further analysed, it was seen that there were 706 households, who were not taking up any crops in Rabi season, but after commencement of this programme they were taking crops in its season and they were taking crops of wheat, paddy, potato, chilly and others. In summer season also, there were 9 families who were not taking any crops and after this programme they were going for crops of wheat, maize, onion, paddy, rubber, potato, tomato and others. Similarly, 7 households were not taking crops in khariff season but post this programme they were taking crops of paddy, cotton, soya bean, wheat, ginger, maize and others. 06

117 Migration Migration is a complex phenomenon. Many factors play a role in pushing and pulling people to and from the urban areas. Employment may be one of the reasons for pushing people outside their native villages. In this table, it was analysed that there were 6 households, where members of the household migrated out for work, but with the increase in work opportunities in their own lands,.8 percent (members of 99 household), reportedly, did not go outside their village for work. But, at the same time, there were 8 households, whose members started moving out for work. It is common phenomenon in villages that people out migrate to earn their livelihood but it is interesting to note that there was a net decrease in migration to the tune of households (99-8=). Ever gone out of the village for work during the lean agriculture season Still go out for employment during lean season Total Total Food Security Individual beneficiaries were asked about food security of their families. It can be inferred from the Tables presented in Annexure- that 9 percent of the respondents reported that they had sufficient food throughout the year and 08 (9.7 percent) families felt that their situation has improved because of MGNREGA work. So, MGNREGA is helping people to sustain themselves and supplementing villager s efforts to gain bit more Figure 0.9- Food Security NO of HH receive sufficient food throughout the year Situation of food has improved situation of food has deteroriated 07

118 08

119 Chapter - OTHER STAKEHOLDERS The MGNREGA Act makes it mandatory for the State Governments to make available in every district a District Programme Coordinator and a Programme Officer, necessary staff and technical support as may be necessary for the implementation of the scheme. Government of India shall fund the management support at the District, Block and Gram Panchayat level. Mates are appointed at the Gram Panchayat level to supervise the work. In this chapter, the information collected from the interviews of Mate, Gram Rozgar Sahayak (GRS), Gram Panchayat (GP) members, blocks and district officials have been presented. The issues pertaining to awareness and impact of MGNREGA of these stakeholders have been described in the relevant chapters earlier.. General Profile of Mates As per the MGNREGA guidelines, the main job responsibilities of Mates are as follows: Overseeing the application for work by villagers Oversee the work allocation in the assigned village Supervision of work Measurement of daily work In total,06 mates were interviewed across the states. Out of them, 8. percent were males and 6.9 percent were females. Seventy percent of them were from BPL and rest belonged to other category Figure.- Profile of Mates (in%, N= 06) Male Female BPL Other 09

120 Figure.: Educational Profile of Mates (in %) Below Primary Primary 6th Pass 7th Pass 8th Pass 9th Pass 0th Pass th Pass th Pass Graduate PG & Other N=06 It seems that among the villagers who were literate preferred to become Mates, because if we see educational profile of this sample survey, then about 60 percent of the mates had passed 0 th or higher class. The educational profile varied from below primary to professional qualification (Figure.). Important findings drawn from the interviews of the mates: Mates helped Gram Panchayats and villagers both in their work application and allocation of work 7. percent said that they had not been entrusted with any other job responsibilities by the state/ district 7. percent of the mates said that they did measurement of works 6 percent of the mates were satisfied with their jobs and 0 percent were dissatisfied while rest were neutral or non-decisive.. Gram Rozgar Sahayak (GRS) The implementation of NREGS involves considerable organizational responsibilities at the level of the Gram Panchayat. To ensure that these are effectively discharged by the Gram Panchayat, the appointment of GRS is suggested in each of the Gram Panchayat. They are also called Employment Guarantee Assistant. The main job responsibilities of GRS are as follows: Overseeing the registration process Overseeing the distribution of job cards Overseeing the application for work by villagers Oversee wage payment and unemployment allowance 0

121 To ensure timely flow of information between Panchayat and District Programme To ensure transparency and pro-active disclosure are observed in the Panchayat Organizing Employment Guarantee Day In total, 76 GRS were interviewed across the country; out of these 8. percent were males and good to note that.8 percent were females Figure. : Profile of GRS Male.8 Female Professional degree Figure.: Educational Profile of GRS (in %) 8.7 Post Gaduation Completed 7.9 Graduation Completed th passed 6th to 0th passed Up to primary The work of GRS is very challenging and more so for women as it involves lot of movement and interaction with several stakeholders. Most of the personnel (60 percent) were Graduate or above. The main points drawn from the interviews of the GRS are as follows: GRS, reportedly, helped GPs and villagers in the registration process, distribution of job cards, 8 percent of the GRS knew that it was their responsibility to organize Employment Guarantee Day. Many problems faced by the GRS in organizing

122 Employment Guarantee Days like- lack of funds, Panchayat not proactive, villagers did not cooperate and others. To make social audits more effective, they suggested that more funds should be allocated for social audits, more trained professionals should be involved, better planning on agenda and logistics 9 percent of the GRS said that they were focal point for information related to MGNREGA at the village level. 60 percent of the GRS forwarded information to the officials every week. 67. percent of the GRS were satisfied with the record maintenance of the Panchayat.. Training of Mate and GRS The training is an integral part of their jobs. Before starting their jobs, they should be fully aware of the programme and all the issues concerning around it. Out of total, 8.7 percent and 9. percent Mates and GRS, respectively, received training. Figure.: Proportion of Mates and GRS received training Mate 9. GRS Out of those Mates and GRS who received training, about 68 percent and 66 percent, respectively received it at the time of recruitment, which reflects optimum capacity of important frontline workers. 6 percent of the mates received training kits, which included measuring tapes, calculator, first aid and one Diary Figure.6: Components of Mate Kits Measuring tape Calculator First aid Diary

123 .. Participation in Social Audits Social audits were organized to ensure transparency in the planning, implementation and monitoring, the mates, GRS and block level officials should attend these programmes. Among the interviewed Block Programme Officers, 89 percent have attended social audits and they have conducted social audits also. Mates and GRS have also attended Gram Sabhas and Social Audits.. Sarpanch or other members of Gram Panchayat The Gram Panchayat (GP) is the pivotal body for implementation at the village level. The GP is responsible for the following activities: Planning of works Receiving applications for registration Verifying registration applications Registering households Issuing Job Cards Receiving applications for employment Issuing dated receipts, Allotting employment within fifteen days of application Executing works Maintaining records Convening the Gram Sabha for social audit Monitoring the implementation of the Scheme at the village level. The main findings drawn from the interviews of the Sarpanch/ members of the GP are as follows: 98 percent of the Panchayats issued job cards percent of the GP members said that cards were issued within the week. 9. percent of GP members reported that people demanded work in the villages. Those who did not demand work were either discouraged by the PRI members, not willing or wage rates were less for them. These were the perceived reasons by the GP members. The details may be seen in the Figure-.7.

124 Figure.7: Reasons for not demanding work as per GP members (in %, N=6) 6. Discouraged by PRI members 7. t willing 9. Wage rates are less Villagers complain about Corruption in 9.6 Any Other... wage disbursement Delay in payments Discouraged by the government officials 68.8 percent reported giving dated receipt on work application. 9. percent reported to have provided employment in last one year to the villagers of their villages. 9. percent reported to have availability of approved work, in 6.7 percent of the GPs it was always displayed in the Gram Panchayat and in 6 percent cases, sometimes displayed on the GPs office. 8. percent reported that villagers received employment within days.. percent reported that work equipment were given on rent 87 percent reportedly say that technical person is always present on the work site 0. percent reported that sometimes contractors were involved in the works and another. percent said that contractors were engaged in the works. 7.6 percent said that muster rolls were used for maintaining the attendance and registers for works 77. percent said that villagers check the muster rolls to check their names in it 7.6 percent said that neither employment nor unemployment allowance was given. 6. percent said that no wage slips were given to them.. Block Programme Officer The Programme Officer essentially acts as a coordinator for NREGS at the Block level. The chief responsibility of the Programme Officer is to ensure that anyone who applies for work gets employment within days. A Programme Officer s other important functions are:

125 Scrutinizing the annual development plan proposed by the GPs Including the proposals of the Intermediate Panchayat Consolidating all proposals into the block plan and submitting it to the Intermediate Panchayat Matching employment opportunities with the demand for work at the Block level; Monitoring and supervising implementation Disposal of complaints Ensuring that social audits are conducted by the Gram Sabhas and following up on them Payment of unemployment allowance in case employment is not provided on time The Programme Officer is accountable to the District Programme Coordinator. The major points drawn from the discussions with BPOs are as follows: They help in preparing estimates for the development Plans. 96 percent of them reported to have provided muster rolls on time. 68 percent of them said that labour in their blocks received wages on time. 8 percent said that they got within two weeks of the work. BPOs said that insufficient funds at the GP level delayed the payments. 8 percent of them said that Banks were cooperative BPOs had reportedly paid unemployment allowance to few desired job card holders in last three years. Rest did not pay because there was no such case The maximum works in the sampled Blocks were undertaken by the Gram Panchayats. At times, they had to change the implementing agencies (0 BPOs reported about this) in the ongoing work because of lack of technical expertise or lack of capacity to handle work within the stipulated time. In fact, BPOs have taken initiatives in providing employment to the desired job holders when GPs were not been able to provide works. 7 BPOs (out of 7) said so. 0 BPOs never found involvement of any contractor in the MGNREGA works whereas 7 BPOs found involvement of contractors several times and 0 found them sometimes.

126 .6 District Programme Coordinator The State Government will designate a District Programme Coordinator, who can be either the Chief Executive Officer of the District Panchayat, or the District Collector, or any other District-level officer of appropriate rank. The overall responsibility for ensuring that the Scheme is implemented according to the Act belongs to the District Programme Coordinator (DPC) at the District level. A District Programme Coordinator is responsible for: Information dissemination Training Consolidating block plans into a district plan Ensuring administrative and technical approvals to the shelf of projects has been accorded on time Release and utilization of funds Ensuring hundred percent monitoring of works, Muster Roll Verifications, Submission of Monthly Progress Reports. The major findings drawn from the interviews of 9 DPCs are as follows: 9 DPCs said that GPs did maximum works in their districts. 6 of them said that they had to change the implementing agencies in the ongoing work once or more, either because they were lacking technical expertise or misappropriation of funds. 8 of them said that they had taken initiatives several times to provide employment to the needy job card holders. 8 of them never found involvement of contractors in the execution of works. Six found contractors several times and they took action against them. 60 (6. percent) of them said that labour in their districts got wages on time. 7 (77. percent) of them said that Banks were cooperative. Only cases of unemployment allowance were reported by 9 DPCs in last four years. 6

127 Chapter - ASSETS AND WORKS One of the goals of MGNREGA is sustainable development of the agricultural economy. Through the process of providing employment on works that address causes of chronic poverty such as drought, deforestation and soil erosion, the Act seeks to strengthen the natural resource base of rural livelihood and create durable assets in rural areas. Effectively implemented, MGNREGA has the potential to transform the geography of poverty. As per the Act, types of works falling under the following permissible areas can be taken up in the villages under MGNREGA: Water Conservation and Water Harvesting Drought Proofing Including afforestation through plantation Irrigation canal including Micro & Minor Irrigation Works Land Development Water Bodies (Construction/Renovation) Flood control and protection works, including drainage in waterlogged areas Rural connectivity Others works that may be notified by the Central Government in consultation with the State Government.. Types of Works In this survey, the works undertaken during the reference period of 00- to 0- in all the sampled villages was verified. Table. shows that number and types of works undertaken across country in the said reference period of the study. Table. Number and types of works taken up in the reference period Types of Works Percentage N Water Conservation and Water Harvesting.6 86 Drought Proofing Including afforestation through plantation.6 6 Irrigation canal including Micro & Minor Irrigation Works Land Development Water Bodies (Construction/Renovation) Flood control and protection works, including drainage in waterlogged areas Rural connectivity. 90 Others 6. 7 N It may be seen that more stress was laid on the rural connectivity rather than on water conservation. 7

128 Maps. showing the types of works taken up under key permissible areas in different states of the country. Water Conservation & Water Harvesting - Of the seven permissible areas, the maximum number of water conservation activities were taken up in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, where more than 60 percent works were taken up in this category. In the states of Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra, about 0 percent to 60 percent works were related to Water Conservation and Water Harvesting during the said reference period. In the remaining states, very few works were taken up in this category. Drought proofing including afforestation through plantation - Less than 0 percent of the total works in this category was taken up across all states except Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram where 0-0 percent activities were undertaken. At all India level, only.6 percent of the total activities fall in this category. Irrigation canal including Micro & Minor Irrigation Works Except Tripura and Andhra Pradesh, in rest of the states less than 0 percent works were undertaken in micro and minor irrigation areas. In Tripura. percent works and in Andhra Pradesh. percent works taken under this category. Land Development A large number of land development works were also, reportedly, undertaken in Assam (.7 percent of total works) followed by Meghalaya (. percent), Nagaland (. percent), Andhra Pradesh (8.7 percent), Arunachal Pradesh (7.9 percent), Mizoram (. percent) and Manipur (0.7 percent). In remaining states proportion of land development works to total works was less than 0 percent. At all India level, proportion of land development works to total works was 0.7 percent. Water Bodies (Construction/Renovation) Under this, Odisha and Kerala undertook 8. percent and percent of the total works, respectively, whereas in remaining states, less than 0 percent works was undertaken in this category. Flood control and protection works Except Kerala, no other state undertook more than 0 percent works under this category. At all India level, only 7.7 percent works was taken up. Rural Connectivity It is the most important activity which was taken up in large proportions especially in northern and north eastern states. States where 0-60 percent works to total works was taken up under this category were J&K, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, M.P., Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. rural connectivity work was taken up in the state of Gujarat. In the remaining states proportion of rural connectivity work was in the range of 0-0 percent. This isa the reason that at all India level nearly percent works were related to rural connectivity. The details may be seen in Table. in Annexure-. 8

129 Map.: Types of works taken up under MGNREGA 9