[Assam] [WaterWatch] Digest Number 1451

[Chan Mahanta]

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5. NREGA saves 50 Assam villages from floods?
     Posted by: "mediavigil" mediavigil at yahoo.co.in mediavigil
     Date: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:39 pm ((PST))


Moderator's Note:  Raghuvansh Prasad Singh claims, "In Assam, for
example, nearly 50 villages were saved from floods because the NREGA
helped build a series of dams for a bargain basement price of Rs 9.5
lakh."


Will someone from Assam verify the truthfulness of this claim?


Moderator


'We will make social audit compulsory for NREGA scheme'




30 Dec 2008

Economic Times



The amendments to the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, along with the new
Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2008 (R&R Bill) was supposed to
rid state governments of the role of acquiring land for private
industrial projects and come up with a non-exploitative resettlement
policy. That was not to be, as the amendment and bills got referred to a
Group of Ministers (GoM) for the second time. Minister for rural
development    Raghuvansh Prasad Singh    speaks to Nistula Hebbar on
the way forward.

The amendments to the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 and the R&R Bill have
been extensively examined by a GoM and the standing committee of
Parliament, but now the whole issue has been referred to another GoM.
What exactly is the reason for this?

Well, the standing committee report and the bills and amendments
proposed by the ministry differed on very significant points. We agreed
on several points but we also disagreed on many. For example, we
proposed that when a private company proposes an industrial project, it
would acquire 70% of the land required on its own before asking for the
state's help in the remaining acquisition and that too if issues of
contiguity are involved.

The standing committee, on the other hand, felt that the state
governments should have the discretion to acquire all the land required,
if they feel the project merits it. All these differences were weighed
and the Cabinet in its wisdom felt that the bills should be revisited.


The Parliament session concluded last week was in fact the penultimate
session of the 14th Lok Sabha. Don't you think the Bills will now
never make it as legislation, at least in the life of this government?

Of course not, I have every hope that the bills will be cleared. We are
yet to constitute a GoM but I feel that it will take no more than a
couple of meetings for it to arrive at a conclusion on the Bills. We
have already held the widest possible consultation for this and I have
personally met Medha Patkar twice over the bills. All this is not in
vain. We will take time, but will come up with a set of policies that
will have the widest consensus. After all it took two years to bring the
NREGA to Parliament.


Talking of the NREGA, one has seen that a charge that has been levelled
against the Act is that there has been hardly any creation of permanent
assets. As a dole programme, do you think this is incidental to the Act?

Only the anti-rural, anti-poor people can level such charges against a
truly welfare oriented programme. Almost 50% of the programme is
oriented towards water conservation. Do you know that we have figures to
prove that water tables across the countryside have risen significantly?
In the urban areas this may not appear to be important. But there is
all-round benefit because migration to urban areas has also come down
significantly.

In Assam, for example, nearly 50 villages were saved from floods because
the NREGA helped build a series of dams for a bargain basement price of
Rs 9.5 lakh. As there are two and a half lakh panchayats across the
country, how can each one's performance be the same? There will
always be some smart people and also some not-so-smart ones. One should
note that even agricultural minimum wages have increased across the
board in states, thanks to NREGA.


Since the increase in agricultural wages seems to have angered the
powerful farmers lobby, do you expect a political backlash against the
UPA government?

The NREGA is only for providing work in the lean season of agriculture.
Therefore the farmers cannot blame NREGA for luring workers away from
agricultural work. There is also a clause in the NREGA, referring to the
state minimum wages Act of 1943 that the wages for NREGA have to be the
same as the states minimum wages.

What has happened is what happens when there is a wider variety of
employment available—that is, workers have a choice. Farmers should
also look at the flipside, they may have to pay more but migration has
been slowed because of NREGA and therefore there is agricultural labour
available in the countryside.


The CAG report was quite scathing over the implementation of NREGA. Are
you taking any steps to counter that impression?

We are making social audits compulsory, and have almost finalised
procedures to ensure that gram sabha meetings be videographed. What this
will do is ensure that there is a working gram sabha in place, and the
NREGA fund is spent after adequate debate and preparation.


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