Rural job scheme can't end poverty

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, while presenting Budget 2016-17, wanted the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act to be thoroughly overhauled. Here is why: An expert committee set up by the State Planning Board has found that MGNREGA perpetuates unskilled labour and, therefore, was inadequate to pull beneficiaries out of poverty.

Given the situation, the expert committee (EC) recommends that skills acquisition and asset creation should be made part of the project.
It also wants the daily wages under MGNREGA to be scaled up from '180 to '250. "The Scheme focuses only on the creation of physical assets and altogether ignores the acquisition of skills," says the expert committee on Employment and Skills Development.

Acquisition of skills is presently not considered a 'durable tangible asset' like roads or bridges under the scheme. The creation of ‘durable tangible asset’ is the major objective of MGNREGA. The expert committee report wants acquisition of skills to be considered as a ‘durable tangible asset’.

The report also wants service sector jobs, too, to be brought under the scheme.
Service sector jobs such as cleaning in hospitals are excluded from the definition of unskilled manual jobs under the Scheme. There is no scope within the MGNREGS for beneficiaries with skills that cannot be marketed in the modern context (for instance, women employed in the declining industries or occupations of cashew, coir and handloom) to acquire more relevant and marketable skills.

The Scheme does not permit the use of even simple mechanical equipment or devices, the report says. “In the context of Kerala, it is no longer possible to get men and women to do manual labour without the use of basic mechanical devices. The restriction on the use of even simple mechanical equipment and devices discourages genuine and deserving persons from joining the Scheme,” the report says.