The thing to do is to pay people fully and involve them in creating something permanent for themselves
It was late 1972. Maharashtra was facing a second round of drought within a decade. One of the then leading magazines asked me to write on famine relief work. I chose Ahmad Nagar district and visited several sites where famine relief work was going on. At some places, men and women were breaking stones to pave roads. Elsewhere, they were carrying soil from one place to another.
When I spoke to them, the main complaint was of no proper payment. If I remember correctly, the minimum wage was Rs 2.50 a day. Most of them got a fraction of it – due to out-put measurement. The work they were doing had no relation to their needs. It was a most uncreative job and there was no sense of satisfaction on the faces.
In 2007, I was on a similar assignment, to see panchayats reputed to be doing “wonderful” work under NREGA in Himachal Pradesh. At the work sites, people were building roads, cutting bushes in the vicinity and laying gravel. Some were breaking stones, others were collecting soil to spread over the gravel. The minimum wage was Rs 100 a day. The main complaint: they got a fraction of it. Most received only about Rs 36-40. The reason: wages were calculated on the basis of out-put measurements.
Thirtyfive years had passed. It was the same story, the same work, and the same complaint. Why haven’t we learned anything in these 35 years? I think it is due to the lack of vision among our politicians and bureaucracy that has sold out to the industrial lobby.
Let me state that I support NREGA fully. So, if I were to implement it, what would I do differently? To begin with, my problem analysis is different than the one propagated for NREGA. Our major failure in the past 60 years has been that we have been unable to bridge the gap between the rural and urban areas as far as basic services are concerned. We have failed to provide quality healthcare and education to the rural poor. These services are concentrated in urban areas.
The Prime Minister talks about inclusive growth. Now, is this possible without inclusive democracy? For the latter, these two basic services – proper healthcare and education – should be universally available.
Can NREGA be used to build a system of fast transport from villages to urban areas? We need a transport system that doesn’t depend upon “external” resources such as oil. How about the laying of a system of railcars that run on solar electricity (for the time being, we can compromise on nuclear power). Laying of such a system would involve 60 per cent manual labour and 40 per cent for rail tracks and construction of bridges if needed.
The availability of such a railcar system would enable a sick person to be taken to hospital within an hour or two. It would also enable children to attend good schools, and people to ferry their 50 or 60 eggs, or 20 kg of vegetables, or 20 litres of milk to urban areas for selling.
A landless person who usually works in the village can, during the off-season, go to an urban area to ply a rickshaw or do some manual labour and return home by evening. A person living in a rural area but working in an office in an urban centre can commute daily.
Instead of travel amounting to 20 km by road per day, and the consequent increase in oil imports, isn’t travel of 20 km by railcar per day a better option? Naturally, this would be opposed by the automobile industry. This industry has already destroyed our cheap trams, which could have stayed on like the Chicago trams. But if the core of India is to be bettered, we need to tackle the automobile industry and decrease our dependence on oil.
We also need to be wary of the precedent of Maharashtra’s EGS, which started with every good intention – to provide manual labour to everyone who needs it. It had its implications on the rural labour market. The landed gentry that controlled Maharashtra politics started feeling uneasy. So they insisted on inclusion of percolation tanks, irrigation work and work on private land. It was accepted. The reason given was that, when the landed gentry get richer through cash crops, wealth is created which in turn creates employment in the villages – removing poverty.
What actually happened? The landed gentry did accumulate wealth through improved farms and irrigation systems but the money went to urban areas because they bought flats in cities and sent their children to cities for higher education. No wealth was invested in the villages except perhaps building palatial houses, thus providing some employment for tradespeople and labourers. The money went in buying Enfield motorcycles first and then Mahindra Jeeps, and the like. The net result was that today the disparity between the rich and poor in Maharastra are far greater than 30 years ago.
One way of decreasing this disparity is to provide a cheap and fast transport system that runs on the principle of equity and is controlled by panchayats. The poor, the sick, women, and school-going children get concessions.
The automobile industry can be asked to produce railcar engines and coaches.
The time has come to start looking afresh at our approach to spending taxpayers’ money, for it should decrease disparity and not the other way round.
The Prime Minister talks about inclusive growth. Now, is this possible without inclusive democracy? For the latter, these two basic services – proper healthcare and education – should be universally available
Instead of travel amounting to 20 km by road per day, and the consequent increase in oil imports, isn’t travel of 20 km by railcar per day a better option? Naturally, this would be opposed by the automobile industry
