The Hindu Business Line : Govt spend on rural job scheme below half-way mark

Long way to go
The Government has been able to offer only 29.3 days of employment so far this fiscal.
A little over Rs 16,000 crore is needed for the 1.78 crore people who have sought jobs this year.

D. Sampathkumar

Mumbai, Sept. 30 With six months to go in the current fiscal (2007-08), public spend on the national rural job guarantee scheme is well short of the half-way mark on the Budget allocation. Against the annual allocation of Rs 12,000 crore, the current expenditure under the scheme has totalled only Rs 4,385 crore.

The achievement on a prorata basis is largely in line with the performance recorded during the year 2006-07, when total spend under various approved projects amounted to Rs 8,823 crore.

The administrative machinery from the village upwards has to be cranked up not only to accelerate expenditure under the scheme to meet the annual target but also come up with fresh schemes. The cumulative value of expenditure approved till date, on sanctioned schemes, amounts to not more than Rs 11,000 crore.

May fall short of target

Even such a level of achievement may well fall short of the national goal of 100 days of guaranteed employment for those who have sought jobs. At an average of Rs 90 per day (the actual expenditure is currently running at Rs 88 per day), the Government needs a total outlay of a little over Rs 16,000 crore for the 1.78 crore people who have sought jobs this year. Clearly, the Centre does not expect the administrative machinery to crank up enough speed to go beyond 75 days of employment. Actually, even that seems to be a case of overoptimism. They have been able to offer only 29.3 days of employment in the current fiscal. That is about all the 1.71 crore individuals who logged 5,000 lakh days of employment have been able to secure.

The sense of urgency that would have been essential for the projects to generate immediate returns is clearly missing. With monsoon all but over, less than one per cent of the nearly 9,000 water conservation projects has been completed across the country.

State-wise spending

States such as Punjab and Haryana, with a better record of rural prosperity than the national average, can cite in their defence for a sluggish performance on the jobs scheme front. But Maharashtra, with its farmers’ suicides and a general state of acute rural poverty, can have no such defence. The State, with a rural population of nearly 7.5 crore has given employment to only 1.62 lakh people, spending a mere Rs 3.80 crore.

In contrast, Rajasthan, with a rural population that is only 60 per cent of that of Maharashtra, generated employment under the scheme for 10 times as many people, incurring a total expenditure of Rs 592 crore in the current fiscal.

Indeed, Assam, Bihar, Karnataka, Orissa, UP and Uttarakhand, States with a high degree of rural deprivation, have to come up with a dramatic improvement in their performance in implementing jobs scheme. They have spent less than 30 per cent of the approved expenditure under the scheme in the first six months of the current fiscal.

Roughly 2.65 crore households involving an adult population 6.68 crore individuals have registered under the scheme. Not counting the under-registration relative to the rural population, it is interesting that a third of the registrants have not sought employment under the scheme. A concerted programme of mass communication on the features of the programme should help.

Getting a few more men to shed their reluctance to seek jobs under the scheme might also help. Women outnumber men among job seekers by 13 per cent.

Related Stories:
Rural jobs programme successful in 8 States
Rural job guarantee Act extended to entire country

More Stories on : Employment | Rural Development

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