C P Joshi, the minister for rural development, said the government is planning to overhaul the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which has been responsible for the improvement in rural consumption, with a focus on productivity gains to drive long-term value. In an interview with Nirmal Jain and Arnab Mitra of IIFL, Joshi said NREGA would now allow work on private land for irrigation and water harvesting, which will enhance productivity in addition to providing more employment. Excerpts:
NREGA has been the most talked-about scheme of your government and has added to rural prosperity. Do you think the programme can be sustained for long in its current form?
Right now, NREGA is largely augmenting incomes and purchasing power in rural India, but not adding significantly to productivity assets.
However, unless the work results in productivity gains for rural India, it will be difficult to sustain NREGA for a long time. Also, people employed under NREGA today are largely illiterate and completely unskilled. We need to gradually upgrade these people to semi-skilled and then skilled workers to improve the nature of work. Also, we need to give employment to educated youth in rural areas under NREGA. Hence, we are revamping NREGA to make it sustainable for the long term.
How do you propose to improve NREGA in terms of productivity gains from the work?
A large part of agricultural land in rural India is rain-fed and not irrigated. This results in a high dependence on monsoons and we see a big impact on production when monsoons fail, like they did this year. Earlier, NREGA did not allow work for irrigation and water harvesting on private land. We have now allowed work on private land of small and marginal farmers. The government is thinking of taking this further and allowing irrigation and water harvesting work on private land of large farmers also under NREGA. Large farmers actually hold majority of agricultural land in India. Thus, we can see large gains in irrigation and water harvesting in rural India through NREGA. Look at a state like Bihar, which has very fertile land, good rainfall and large rivers, but lags in a big way in productivity due to poor irrigation and water harvesting infrastructure. This will significantly help in improvement of agricultural productivity in future.
How big can NREGA become in five years?
If you analyse the data on NREGA, while 70% rural households have job cards, only 45% have taken employment under NREGA and only 14% of the people employed under NREGA have availed of the full 100 days of employment guaranteed under NERGA. Thus, we have a long way to go. As discussed, large parts of north and east India are lagging in NREGA employment. I believe at least 45-50% of households should be able to avail the full 100 days employment under NREGA in a few years’ time, compared to 14% now.
The execution of NREGA has not been uniform. While states like Rajasthan have seen very good execution, others like Bihar are lagging behind…
Yes, the execution has been very different across states. Out of the 621 districts of India, a large number employed in NREGA is predominantly in the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. Almost two-thirds of the Rs 40,000 crore allocation for NREGA would be spent in four or five states. Large states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Orissa, which have the highest population of poor people in rural India, are lagging behind in NREGA. It is here that we need to really ramp up.
So what steps are being taken to improve NREGA in these large states?
We are working on it. I am in discussions with the state governments on this matter. We have identified specific districts where we need to first focus. I am hopeful that once we allow NRGEA on private land of all farmers, more work will be available and hence employment under NREGA will improve in these states too.
How do you propose to give work to educated youth under NREGA?
We are planning a ‘Rajiv Gandhi Seva Kendra’ in every village panchayat. These centres will have computers and Internet connectivity. We will be able to provide employment to educated youth in these centres to do various kinds of jobs on computers.
You spoke of skill upgradation of the poor in rural India. How do you plan to achieve this?
We are embarking on a major skill upgradation programme in rural India, which will drive long-term productivity. Over 30% school students in rural India drop out of education before completing their 10th class exams.
We are setting up institutes to train these students in specific vocational skills like electrical repairs, plumbing and carpentry. Today every village has electrical borewells, electrical white goods, motorcycles, furniture, etc, which need regular repair and maintenance.
Thus, these trained youth will get employed in the rural areas itself. To begin with, each of the 621 districts is getting one such institute with central government funding. We will expand the number of institutes in future, to cater to a very large number of rural youth. Currently, Rs23,000 crore on bank credit is made available to rural skilled manpower for starting their own work. However, this amount is mostly unutilised, as there has been no major effort to impart vocational skills to rural youth.
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