National Rural Employment Guarantee Act guarantees of at least 100 days of employment for the rural households. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) provides an opportunity to the Panchayats to implement the schemes for generating employment as well as meeting sustainable infrastructure. The civil society is an important facilitator for effective implementation of NREGS.

Status of Implementation of NREGA

During the year, Samarthan undertook a study on the status of implementation of NREGA in 6 states intervened by PACS Programme. These states were Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. Samarthan decided to proactively intervene in promoting entitlement of right to employment strengthening capacities of Panchayats to deliver the programme effectively. The social promise inherent in the Act would remain a dream unless its provisions are fully implemented and citizens are mobilized to demand their rights. The monitoring report brought out by Samarthan was a civil society initiative to points out the bottlenecks in implementation of NREGA and suggest ways forward.

The report throws light on the performance of the different states on various aspects of implementation of NREGA like Job card distribution, works started, employment provided against employment demanded etc. Primary information was collected from the experiences culled out from the NREGA week celebrated by the partners of PACS programme in more than 500 villages spread across 20 districts in six states. Additional data from 87 panchayats (107 villages) on a structured questionnaire was also collected.

The report on “Status of NREGA Implementation” was released at a National Tribunal on NREGA organized at the India Social Forum in New Delhi on 10th November 2006 by Ms Annie Raja, Member National Council for NREGA. The National Tribunal was attended by over 500 people from various States. A state specific report for the state of Madhya Pradesh was also prepared for collecting additional data from other districts.

Tribunal on NREGA

A state level Tribunal on the implementation of NREGP in Madhya Pradesh was organized by Samarthan on 1st November 2006. This event was organized in collaboration with the PACS programme. It was organized with the objective of initiating a dialogue with the policy makers on the areas of operational bottlenecks and local level solutions based on the experiences from the grassroots. More than 150 participants from 15 districts participated in the event.

Directly affected people presented issues related to Job Cards, payment of wages, delay in measurements under NREGA, non involvement of gram sabha in monitoring wage payments etc. The jury of the tribunal consisted of distinguished members of the judiciary, media and concerned government officials. The issues emerged from the tribunal were followed up with the Government to improve the situation on the ground.

- Model Building on NREGA