The National Advisory Council (NAC) to the UPA government, when it had envisaged this ambitious social intervention, was aware of the infirmities inherent in earlier job guarantee schemes. It listed 13 fatal flaws that had undermined earlier initiatives: lack of awareness among local communities about its existence, lack of community participation, lack of planning, sub-standard quality of assets created, false muster rolls, problems of payments, contractors persisted with, diversion of funds, weak monitoring and verification systems, no comprehensive data base, inadequate capacity of implementing agencies, multiple wage programmes running in parallel, no public accountability.

The NAC hoped to overcome these fatal flaws by ensuring that the NREGS gives work on demand, that no contractor is recruited for carrying out the works, that payment would be made on every seventh day, that muster rolls would be maintained on the work site itself, and that a social audit would be carried out with the involvement of the local people to ensure accountability. So far the NREGS appears to have been successful in avoiding only two of 13 listed flaws. From all evidence, contractors have been kept away from these sites and there has been a streamlining of the job guarantee programmes on offer — it is the NREGS that has emerged the flagship project in these 200 districts. As for the other flaws highlighted by the NAC, they are both ubiquitous and persistent, despite the extraordinary attention paid to the Scheme by those at the highest echelon of government.

Take the first, and most major debilitating factor — a profound and widespread lack of awareness. Not only are many within the district ignorant about the existence of such a scheme; not only are those who know about it and want to avail themselves of it in the dark about their entitlements under it; not only are those meant to oversee it like sarpanches, ignorant and untrained — even those labouring on these worksites are clueless about working under the NREGS!

A detailed report on 33 panchayats in Bhawanipatna block in Kalahandi district, filed by a group of 25 volunteers in June, highlighted how this debilitating lack of general information is in direct proportion to the interest the local district administration and gram panchayats take in the project. While some pockets reported satisfactory progress, in other villages even the panchayat offices were found to be locked on most days. Many did not have the facilities to store NREGS documents, much less display them for public viewing.

The confusion of where to go for a job card was widespread, and while the minimum wage was Rs 55 in the area, most men reported that they were getting much less, with the women paid even lower. The leaks that the NAC had hoped to plug in the NREGS were very much in evidence. Reports from other parts of the country six months later, revealed almost the same problems. Not only were the wages paid far lower than the statutory minimum, they were delayed, and despite an entitlement of 100 days under the Scheme, some managed only 10-25 days of work in many districts.

We are talking of regions where illiteracy is rampant and media exposure minimal. Unless the NREGS goes to the people through an active outreach programme and adequate staff, rather than expect the people to come in search of it, this enormous gap caused by a lack of information and understanding of entitlements can never get bridged.

Already the level of employment generated by the NREGS has failed to meet expectations, going by the gross under-utilisation of funds released for the Scheme. According to the Centre’s own assessment, only 25 per cent of the budget for the NREGS has been utilised in a little over six months, and the number of mandays generated is far below the figure projected. Take Karnataka for example. By July 31, the state government was able to spend only Rs 30.57 crore out of a fund of Rs 131.12 crore, and this has been the story in many other states as well. And we have not even begun to ask whether the works that are being done are getting translated into what can be considered to be important infrastructure that would make a difference to the quality of life in these regions.

So do these conspicuous failures mean that those who had argued vociferously against the NREGS last year were right? That would be an extremely short-sighted reading of the experiences of these last 10 months. For the first time in 50 years of social welfare planning in India, we have evolved a method that can potentially reach out to the lowest tier by using methods that can potentially deepen democracy in that it takes the idea of entitlements and choices to the last person. It has, besides, a self-limiting structure and will be found redundant in those regions where it is not needed, regions where rural labour has already found themselves more rewarding jobs and professions.

But all good ideas and paradigms require to be constantly reviewed, refined, reformed and made relevant. One of the more innovative features of the NREGS is the provision of a social audit by local groups and communities. Such audits if conducted efficiently can both create wider awareness about these programmes and flag corruption and inefficiencies. A recent exercise in Hardoi, UP, for instance, underlined the lethargy of the local administration. Another in Madhya Pradesh revealed an invidious corruption, with even the engineers sent to evaluate these projects demanding commissions from sarpanches. The process of social auditing, with the help of information technologies, needs to be mainstreamed and assisted, so that every district covered by the NREGS is under constant and unremitting scrutiny and is seen to be so.

So don’t take your eye off the ball. The most important welfare programme of 2006 must gain relevance in 2007.