An inconvenient truth? Or yet another case of shoddy data collection by state agencies? The government is scrambling to prove that it is the latter, after data on the UPA's flagship poverty alleviation programme shows that it may not be reaching its intended beneficiaries, those classified in official-speak as below the poverty line (BPL).
A recent note circulated to all state departments by the rural development ministry revealed that only one crore (10 million) out of the 12 crore job cards registered under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (or NREGA) were officially classified as poor during 2010-11.
Further, the note stated that only 36 lakh (3.6 million) so-called BPL families have worked for at least 15 days during 2010-11 compared with 366 lakh families classified as above the poverty line (APL). This ratio remains little changed this year too, so far in 2011-12, some 20 lakh BPL families are shown to have worked for at least 15 days compared with 202 lakh APL families.
Concieved and enacted as a job guarantee scheme in 2005, the NREGA, which guarantees 100 days of employment to its beneficiaries, became one of the trophy schemes of the Congress-led UPA, giving it a pro-poor halo and helping it land a second term in office after the 2009 elections.
Spending under this scheme steadily rose to Rs 39,377 crore in 2010-11 from Rs 8,823 crore in 2006-07. For 2011-12, the government has budgeted Rs 40,000 crore for NREGA. While talk of fraud and misuse has bedeviled the scheme for years, these have become more common in recent months.
States such as Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh have in the last two years taken action against hundreds of elected representatives respectively for misappropriating NREGA funds. The irregularities include forming musters of ghost workers leading to payments into ghost accounts, delayed and nonpayment of wages and preferential treatment to some farmers.
A clutch of influential ministers and economists have also lately blamed NREGA for rising inflation and acute farm labour shortages in the hinterland. If the rural development ministry's numbers in its note to state governments are to be believed, it means that APL beneficiaries have monopolised the scheme at the expense of the poor.
But ministry officials say this is not correct, noting that data underpinning the numbers was highly unreliable because most states did not correctly mark the BPL status of registered families.
"Basing any conclusions on these numbers will be highly misleading. States have not marked all the families that are BPL and that has resulted in the high numbers of APL," said one official, asking not to be identified. The official contended that if state governments did not have data regarding the status of families and do not mark beneficiaries specifically as BPL, the system automatically classifies it as APL.
A recent note circulated to all state departments by the rural development ministry revealed that only one crore (10 million) out of the 12 crore job cards registered under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (or NREGA) were officially classified as poor during 2010-11.
Further, the note stated that only 36 lakh (3.6 million) so-called BPL families have worked for at least 15 days during 2010-11 compared with 366 lakh families classified as above the poverty line (APL). This ratio remains little changed this year too, so far in 2011-12, some 20 lakh BPL families are shown to have worked for at least 15 days compared with 202 lakh APL families.
Concieved and enacted as a job guarantee scheme in 2005, the NREGA, which guarantees 100 days of employment to its beneficiaries, became one of the trophy schemes of the Congress-led UPA, giving it a pro-poor halo and helping it land a second term in office after the 2009 elections.
Spending under this scheme steadily rose to Rs 39,377 crore in 2010-11 from Rs 8,823 crore in 2006-07. For 2011-12, the government has budgeted Rs 40,000 crore for NREGA. While talk of fraud and misuse has bedeviled the scheme for years, these have become more common in recent months.
States such as Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh have in the last two years taken action against hundreds of elected representatives respectively for misappropriating NREGA funds. The irregularities include forming musters of ghost workers leading to payments into ghost accounts, delayed and nonpayment of wages and preferential treatment to some farmers.
A clutch of influential ministers and economists have also lately blamed NREGA for rising inflation and acute farm labour shortages in the hinterland. If the rural development ministry's numbers in its note to state governments are to be believed, it means that APL beneficiaries have monopolised the scheme at the expense of the poor.
But ministry officials say this is not correct, noting that data underpinning the numbers was highly unreliable because most states did not correctly mark the BPL status of registered families.
"Basing any conclusions on these numbers will be highly misleading. States have not marked all the families that are BPL and that has resulted in the high numbers of APL," said one official, asking not to be identified. The official contended that if state governments did not have data regarding the status of families and do not mark beneficiaries specifically as BPL, the system automatically classifies it as APL.
"This is totally not what the situation on the ground is. We have asked states to update the information. This is wrong," he added. Independent analysts who closely track NREGA agreed, saying the scheme largely catered to the very poor. "From experience I can tell that people who turn up for work are poor. There is some truth that a lot of benefits are being misappropriated, but on a national basis that cannot be true.
This must be a case of faulty classification of poor and non poor," said Pramathesh Ambasta of Samaj Pragati Sahyog, a grassroots organisation that implements the scheme in the tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh.
State government officials also concur with the line taken by the rural development ministry, blaming district authorities for poor recording of data. "Many districts have plainly forgotten to collect the BPL, APL data of workers. That is the reason the MIS data is unreliable as we have not been able to update the status for majority of beneficiaries," said an official in Uttar Pradesh's rural development ministry.
This must be a case of faulty classification of poor and non poor," said Pramathesh Ambasta of Samaj Pragati Sahyog, a grassroots organisation that implements the scheme in the tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh.
State government officials also concur with the line taken by the rural development ministry, blaming district authorities for poor recording of data. "Many districts have plainly forgotten to collect the BPL, APL data of workers. That is the reason the MIS data is unreliable as we have not been able to update the status for majority of beneficiaries," said an official in Uttar Pradesh's rural development ministry.
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This official said that in UP for instance, while 80% of the job cards belong to BPL families, but state departments have marked only 20% as such in their monthly reports due to unavailability of data from districts. Similarly, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra say that BPL families logically account for up to 80% of the overall work demand.
The central government has started asking for greater granular information, notably the APL or BPL status of beneficiaries, as part of attempts to extend health insurance cover under the Rashtriya Swathya Bima Yojna to all MGNREGA families. Most BPL families already have this insurance cover and the government's wants to better capture data on APL families which fall under the unorganised worker category.
Source :ET
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