Morung Express News
Dimapur | August 6
Nagaland state was allotted a total of Rs. 66.69 Crore to implement the National Rural Employment Guarantee (Act) scheme. The claimed expenditure of the state in implementing the much-hyped rural employment scheme was listed as Rs. 54.41 Crore spent. But then, it has surfaced that Nagaland is the only state that has not completed 100-days of wage employment – and not once, but for two consecutive fiscal years of the scheme: 2006-2007 and 2007-2008.
The assessment statistics of the Ministry of Rural Development on the performance of NREGA states are self-explanatory. Strangely, the ministry had recently refuted the report of the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) which highlighted flaws in the implementation of the UPA government’s mega NREGA. The Ministry of Rural Development had denounced NCAER’s report as “half-baked” and unreflective of “any ground reality.”
But for Nagaland it doesn’t matter which report, because the Rural Development ministry’s own statistics (published on the center’s website) show the state on a very uncomfortable side of the line. For instance for NREGA year 2006-2007, Nagaland’s employment status reports I & II show a “completed report” of ‘NIL’. No district are listed, no expenditures and no completion of works or for that matter, any work taken up under NREGA.
Similarly, for NREGA year 2007-2008, the employment report status-I (nil) showed only one district, Wokha district that had any semblance of the scheme being implemented. 81 job cards were issued in the only district in RD’s chart, Wokha, but again, none of the card holders were shown to have received employment for even a single day. For some strange reason, NREGA for year 2008-2009 had any semblance of implementation: Kohima and Wokha districts fared far ahead of other districts (but far from even a quarter of the national average).
Kohima registered 11011 households and Wokha 1151 households who were listed as having completed 100 days of NREGA wage employment. Mon, Mokokchung, Kiphire, Longleng and Phek were the districts that had nil figures on the 100-day employment chart. Even more curious, the Ministry’s statistics showed Nagaland’s performance at the bottom in implementing the NREGA scheme: Total works – 3, 314 and works completed – 693.
But Nagaland state has company at the bottom, with Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Mizoram sitting in the same boat. National news agencies today reported on the states that had not provided in totality the guaranteed 100-days wage employment to all the registered rural households in over three years of the landmark legislation.
News agencies also quoted the Rural Development Ministry that the number of households which completed 100-days of employment was nil in Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland during 2006-07. Then again in 2007-2008, no household completed 100-days of wage employment in Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland.
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), the flagship rural development programme of the UPA government, was launched in February 2006 in 200 districts. It was later expanded to another 130 districts in 2007-2008 and eventually extended to cover all the 593 districts.
A total of 4, 49, 40,870 rural households were provided jobs under NREGA during 2008-2009 across the country but about 14.48 percent of them could get 100-days of employment. The RD statistics reveal that about 10.62 percent of the total 3, 38, 89,122 registered rural households in 2007-2008 were provided 100-days of employment.
During 2006-2007, a total of 2, 09, 83,491 households were given NREGA jobs, but a mere 10.29 could get 100-days of employment. The ministry’s assessment said the national average of the number of working days per household under NREGA was 48 in the last fiscal and it stood at 25 till May 2009.
