Dr. Santhosh Kumar S (Post-Doctoral Fellowship Awardee of ISSR) Associate Professor. Helaney M.Y. Associate Professor

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1 Problems in the Implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in Kerala: An Exploration at the Worksite Mates Level Dr. Santhosh Kumar S (Post-Doctoral Fellowship Awardee of ISSR) Associate Professor P.G. and Research Dept. of Commerce St. Peter s College, Kolenchery PO, Kerala, India. Pin Helaney M.Y. Associate Professor P.G. and Research Dept. of Commerce St. Peter s College, Kolenchery PO, Kerala, India. Pin Abstract Poverty and unemployment are strongly related and both these problems are particularly severe in rural India. In order to address the problem of rural unemployment, Govt. of India initiated several Self-employment programmes. However, most of these schemes could not achieve the desired result. The MGNREGS, launched in February 2006, is the largest rural employment programme ever undertaken in India unleashing wage employment and livelihood opportunities for millions of rural poor in the country. For very long, Kerala has been struggling with the problem of unemployment, which has been worsened further by the slow progress of the State s tryst with industrialisation. Even though, several Central and State initiated employment programmes have been operating in Kerala long back, none of them could bring about the desired results. However, the MGNREGS implemented in Kerala since February 5, 2006 is reported to be gaining momentum. Evidences for the sudden increase in the purchasing power of the poor people and local economic development are many. At present (2013), more than 25,00,000 households have been registered all over Kerala expecting employment and livelihood under the programme. As an ambitious programme targeting the acute unemployment problem of the State, the efficient and effective implementation of the programme assumes prime importance. Anomalies in the implementation of the Scheme have been reported from different corners alarming the severity of the problems demanding remedy. The present study made an exploration into the practical problems or difficulties in the implementation of the programme based on the views of the Worksite Mates responsible for the worksite management. The study found that, altogether; the problems at the worksites regarding implementation are less severe except a few problems which bring much hardship to the Mates in the worksite management. Key Words - Implementation Problems MGNREGA Kerala MGNREGA Mates MGNREGA I. Introduction India lives in its villages, the statement of our father of nation - Mahatma Gandhi - is valid even today from political, social and economic perspectives. As per the census 2011, India s total population figures crores, of which 68.84per cent (83.31 crores) lives in the rural areas and only per cent (37.71 cr ores) are in the urban areas. (Government of India, 2012). Rural life in India is characterised by poverty, unemployment, poor and inadequate infrastructure and all these have a cascading effect on urban centres causing slums and socioeconomic tensions. Hence development of rural areas receives much attention in the various schemes designed for the development of Indian economy. To a great extent, the size of

2 employment in a country depends on the level of development. So when a country makes progress and its production expands, the employment opportunities also grow. In India, during the past three decades production has increased in all sectors of the economy which has led to an increase in the level of employment. As against the GDP growth at an average rate of 6.4 per cent between to , the employment growth declined from 2 to 1 per cent. (Sengupta, 2004). Thus the country had been witnessing a jobless growth in these years. This was due to the fact that the rate of economic growth was lower than the targeted rate and so adequate number of jobs was not created. (Puri, 2008). It is also argued that economic growth in India in the recent years has not led to much employment generation (Chandrasekhar, 2004). Unni and Raveendan (2007) have reported that the overall employment growth declined slightly over the two decades without growing on a par with growth in GDP. This was particularly true for rural areas while urban areas maintained the annual growth rate of 3.10 per cent (Uma and Raveedran, 2007). II. Employment Schemes in India Growth with Social Justice has been the basic objective of the development planning in India since independence (Government of India, 2001). The prevalence of unemployment and poverty were viewed as the most serious concern for development. But Government did not frame any specific long term policy for solving the unemployment problem because, for quite some time, it was thought that economic growth will result in increased employment opportunities and that accelerated rate of economic growth will be able to meet substantially the employment requirements of the growing labour force. This, however, did not happen as the number of unemployed increased from 22 million in 1969 to 42 million in 2004 (Sengupta, 2004). Government, therefore, placed increasing emphasis on taking up schemes for providing additional employment opportunities and various special schemes of employment generation - both self-employment and wage employment programmes. III. Mahatma Ghandi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is the Government of India s largest employment and rural development programme. In the last 7 years, MGNREGA has been an important and fall-back source of income for millions of rural households; on an average 25 per cent of the rural households seek employment under the Act, annually (Govt. of India, 2013). MGNREGA has contributed to increased rural wages across the country, empowerment of marginalized sections and improved natural resource management (Govt. of India, 2013). The Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme came into force in the State of Kerala from 5 th February 2006 in 2 districts namely Palakkad and Wayanad. Another two districts, Idukki and Kasargod, were brought under the Act in the second phase and on 1 st April 2008 it was extended to all the 14 districts in the State. At present (2013), more than 25,00,000 households have been registered all over Kerala expecting employment and livelihood under the programme. During the year the employment generated under the programme figure 8.36 crore person-days, of which 7.78 crore person-days were for women. The state utilised nearly 99 per cent of the sanctioned amount for the programme during

3 IV. Review of Literature Macro level Studies pertaining to the overall implementation and performance of MNREGA at the national and state levels are plenty in number (Sankaran, 2011) (Banerjee & Saha, 201) (Dutta, Murgai, Ravallion, & Walle, 2012) (Tiwari, et al., 2011) (Jacob, 2008) (Nayak, Behera, & Mishra, 2010) (Roy, 2010). Reports by governmental and non-governmental agencies covering total perspective figures a good number. However, a serious exploration or examination, at the national or state levels, into the implementation problems or difficulties at the worksites are hardly found. The state of Kerala with hundred per cent literacy and higher unemployment rate are alleged to be facing practical problems relating to management of work at worsites. This research gap really is the motive to pursue a study at the worksite level to explore the practical implementation chaos at worksites. V. Research Objective, Methodology and Data The exploratory study is designed to identify the problems faced by the Mates 1 at the worksite level in connection with practical implementation of MNREGA in Kerala. The population for the study comprises of all the Worksite Mates working under the scheme all over Kerala. A sample of 120 Mates was selected at random through a multi-stage sampling process (Table 1). An interview schedule loaded with thirty-four statements demanding responses on a five-point Likert-type scale was served to the Mates as part of collection of data. The collection of data was done during June-July Factor Analysis on the thirtyfour statements with the Principal Component Analysis as an extraction method and Varimax as Rotation method with Kaiser Normalization was performed for dimension reduction and identification of factors. Bartlett s Test of Sphericity and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy (KMO Test) we re performed to confirm the suitability of the data for factor analysis. Selection of Districts (3 out of 14 Districts) Thiruvananthapuram Table 1 Selection of Sample Mates Selection of Blocks (2 Blocks each from each Districts) Selection of Panchayats (2 Panchayats from each Block) Selection of Mates (20 Mates from each Panchayat) Pothencode Pothencode 20 Nedumangadu Aruvikkara 20 Ernakulam Wayanadu Vazhakklam Vengola 20 Vadavukode Kunnathunadu 20 Sulthanbathery Ambalavayal 20 Mananthavadi Edavaka 20 3 Districts 6 Blocks 6 Panchayats 120 Mates 1 Mates are one among the workers (selected through a fair, transparent and participatory process) who are responsible for general work supervision, formation of groups, marking out task for each group, maintenance of muster roll at worksites, ensuring quality of work execution and provision of worksite facilities. 115

4 VI. Analysis, Results and Discussion Though the MGNREGA specifies norms for selection of Mates reserving preference for female workers, the sample representing Mates for the current study confirms that hundred per cent of the Mates in the scheme are possibly women. Significant majority of the Mates (64.1 per cent) are in the age group of years. While 46.7 per cent of the Mates have High School education, another 46.7 per cent have Higher Secondary School education. Nearly 93 per cent of the Mates have more than three years of experience in working with MGNREGS and 58.4 per cent of them have more than three years experience as Mates (Table 2). Sl No Variables Table 2 Profile of Mates Female Male Total No % No % No % I Age (Yrs.) Above Total II Marital status 1 Single Married Total III Qualification 1 Upper Primary High School Higher Secondary Graduation Total IV Experience with MNREGA (Yrs) 1 Up to Above Total V Experience as Mate (Yrs) 1 Up to Above Total

5 VI Annual Family Income (Rs) Above Total Source: Authors Data As mentioned in the methodology part of the study, in order to analyse the collected data and to identify the problems at the Worksite Mates level in connection with the implementation of the scheme, factor analysis on the thirty-four statements with the Principal Component Analysis as an extraction method and Varimax as Rotation method with Kaiser Normalization is performed. Bartlett s Test of Sphericity and KMO measure of Sampling Adequacy were performed to confirm the suitability of the data for factor analysis. After that, Kaiser s criterion was used while performing factor analysis in order to decide the number of factors to be retained. Then several iterations were used in order to find the items with low loadings on each of the factors so as to eliminate them. The chi-square value (Table 3) computed while performing Bartlett s test of Sphericity indicated that it was highly significant, significance level being 0.000, and thus met the criteria of value lower than 0.05 in order to perform factor analysis. The KMO measure of sampling adequacy computed was which exceeded the minimum value of 0.6, so good for factor analysis. After these preliminary steps, factor analysis with Principal Component Analysis as an extraction method had been performed using the 120 cases. The communalities at the initial stage and after extraction showed that the extraction values of all variables were sufficiently high (i.e.>0.50). Using the Kaiser s criterion for extraction of factors, the performed Principal Component Analysis led to the extraction of only 11 factors, meaning that all the 34 variables (question statements) should be regrouped to form only 11 quality dimensions (only those factors with Eigen values greater than 1 taken as extracted factors). The model with the 11 factors was able to explain per cent of the total variance in all the thirty-four variables (Table 4). Table 3 KMO and Bartlett s Tests Results Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy..608 Approx. Chi-Square Bartlett s Test of Sphericity df 561 Sig..000 Source: SPSS Generated Result out of Authors Data 117

6 Table 4 Total Variance Explained by 11 Factors Initial Eigenvalues Extraction Sums of Squared Loadings Component % of Cumulative % of Cumulative Total Total Variance % Variance % Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Source: SPSS Generated Result out of Authors Data The descriptive statistics of the eleven factors (Table 5) confirm that altogether the eleven problem factors have a score of 47 per cent signalling existence of problems, though not severe, in the implementation of the scheme at the worksite level. The following discussions on the factors give more insights into the problems. Factor 1: Difficulty in identifying suitable work for inclusion in the scheme due to nonavailability of suitable work or unsuitability of available works to the norms of the scheme is quite evident from the exploration (score percent ; Table 5). Similarly, making arrangements in the sanctioned worksite to perform work also bring moderate level of hardship to the Mates. Altogether, the seven statements grouped to form factor 1 clearly confirms the problem. Factor 2: Higher proportion of age old workers in the worksite make worksite management difficult for Mates (score 39.6 per cent; Table 5). Managing the workers to complete the targeted volume of work within the span of labour days sanctioned becomes a challenge for the Mates. Lethargy of aged people, wilful or otherwise, is alleged to be a headache for the Mates in the worksite. Factor 3: Improper and insufficient tools at worksite on account of lack or insufficient provision for tools and spares are reported to be causing difficulty in the worksite management (score 32 per cent; Table 5). Laxity of the local authorities in facilitating the workers with appropriate and adequate tools is really spoken to be the issue. Factor 4: Workers turnover from the worksite often harm the execution of the work as planned. It causes delay in the completion of the work with the available force so as to cover the labour days sanctioned. Prohibition for admission of new workers as substitutes for the delinquent makes management of worksite difficult (score 46.5 per cent; Table 5). Factor 5: Time keeping at worksite, though not a severe problem, is disturbing the Mates at worksite (score per cent; Table 5). Criticism from different corners regarding the effective hours of daily work at the worksite puts the Mates in poor light. 118

7 Table 5 Descriptive Statistics of Factors identified Sl. No Identified Problem Factors No. of Variables Mean Std. Error SD % Score 1 Work Identification and Arrangement of Worksite Facilities Higher Proportion Age Old workers Insufficient and Improper Tools Higher Turnover of Workers Difficulty in Timekeeping at Worksite Indifferent Attitude Workers and Related Accidents at Worksite Shortage of Workers Upkeep of Equipment at Worksite Physical Work of Mates Along with Others Lack of Public Support Difficulty in Job Card Management Total Source: SPSS Generated Result out of Authors Data Factor 6: The heterogeneous workgroup at the worksite portrays different and differing attitude towards the work, fellow workers and the Mates. Harmonizing them is the Mates 119

8 responsibility. More over careless execution of work and handling of tools can bring accidents accentuating Mates responsibilities (score per cent; Table 5). Factor 7: Shortage of workers to form a group to execute a work is another problem confronting the mates (score per cent; Table 5). Mates find it difficult to build groups of workers to match the work. Factor 8: Upkeep of tools for work in the worksite is reported to be a severe problem to the Mates (score 91 per cent; Table 5). Absence of provision for repairs and storage impairs the Mates from ensuring trouble-free tools and its safe custody. Factor 9: Mandatory physical work of the Mates along with others in the worksite overloads the Mates (score 83.1 per cent; Table 5). The overload of Mates forces them to leave their responsibility and to remain as labourers of MGNRGS. Factor 10: Lack of public support at worksites is raised with less severity (score 22 per cent; Table 5). Some of the Mates experienced non-cooperation and unnecessary intervention of public during work time. Factor 11: Job Card entry and its upkeep are magnifying the clerical job responsibility of Mates without any remuneration for the extra work. Negligence in bringing job cards regularly by the workers also mounts the troubleshooting with regard to its maintenance. VII. Conclusion The success of government initiated social programmes are to be evaluated not in terms of the tangible economic benefits they produce but in terms of the tangible and intangible noneconomic benefits they extends to the targeted groups and the public at large. Ensuring successful implementation of these programmes is essential to reap the intended benefits without fail. The success or otherwise of the MGNREGA introduced in the country as the largest wage employment guarantee programme also depends on the effectiveness of its implementation process involving different levels. At the bottom level, the worksites captains (Mates) are responsible for the organisation and management of worksites. The efficient discharge of their responsibilities covering general work supervision, formation of work groups, marking out task for each group, maintenance of muster roll at worksites, ensuring quality of work execution and provision of worksite facilities really marks the success of the programme. Difficulties at worksites while organizing and executing of MGNREGA work are common. Identification and remedying of those difficulties alone can bring improved results. 120

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