Those who claim that welfare schemes ought to prevent the migration of workers from rural areas are promoting dependency and idleness and destroying the work ethic.
The Indian Government is to spend Rs 88,000 crore on rural development this year. About Rs 40,000 crore is under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme Act (NREGA). Government spokesmen and media fed by the government are asserting that the NREGA and some other schemes are meant to stop migration of workers from rural areas. This aim is irrational and is against historical experience.
If there were no migrations from overcrowded Europe to the newly discovered Australia and America, Europe would have been pauperised and the world would have been less prosperous without the wealth of these two continents.
The less prosperous Spanish-speaking South American workers are migrating to the US, thus satisfying the need for manual workers in that country. A few million skilled persons, such as electricians, masons, carpenters, fitters, plumbers, welders, drivers and construction workers from Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu are working in the Gulf countries.
If these people did not migrate to where work is, they could not have been fed and housed and uplifted here in India. It is their remittances that are adding to the prosperity of families at home.
State to state
Lakhs of Indian engineers and other professionals too are migrating to the US and some other developed countries in search of jobs. Their remittances are helping India. The skills of the returning people add to the talent pool in India.
Punjab's agriculture will wither if workers from Bihar do not migrate to that state. Within Andhra Pradesh, farm workers migrate from one district to another for so many agriculture operations, such as transplanting and harvesting.
Tens of thousands of men and women involved in physical labour are migrating from Srikakulam and Prakasam districts into the construction works in Hyderabad.
So many educated people and entrepreneurs migrate from one State to another, from one country to another, for full and better utilisation of their talents.
Encouraging the educated to migrate and confining the unskilled labourers to the village may ensure garnering votes of the poor.
Good money, wasteful use
Migration is an historical phenomenon. It can be seasonal, for short periods or permanent. Any scheme that is designed to contain India's rural population in the village of their birth itself is a retrograde step.
Villages cannot sustain so many unskilled labourers and not-so-literate labour. By creating useless “work” we are promoting dependency among the unfortunate rural, illiterate and unskilled population. This is, indeed, a social crime.
An example of the village Angaluru in Krishna district will illustrate how good money is being thrown away for bad results. Out of 1,000 families, 800 had registered themselves as BPL, seeking work under NREGA. So far, it was 100 days at Rs. 100 per day. Even at this, 80,000 mandays of useful work in a year is impossible in a village and that too, year after year.
The result is, wages for agricultural labour have gone up by 2.5 times and agriculture is becoming increasingly unviable. Farmers feel that it is better to sell the land and put that money a bank FD.
For instance, one acre of agriculture land sells at a minimum Rs 10 lakh. If this is sold and the money is put in an FD, the annual return is Rs 90,000. By cultivating that land, no farmer gets more than Rs 10,000-15,000 in a year. What incentive is there for cultivation?
Those who are registered for NREGA are mustered just for attendance and since there is no work to be done they go home, thus paid for no or little work.
This easily obtained money is spent largely on liquor: Rs15,000 crore per year worth of liquor is being sold in Andhra Pradesh. One can guess where the NREGA money is going. This is a social crime.
Welfare ethic, no work ethic
We are promoting dependency and idleness and destroying the work ethic; promoting, instead, the welfare ethic. It is estimated that excluding the subsidy on fertilisers, Rs 4 lakh crore of subsidies and throwaways such as pension for the old are spent under welfare. And 85 per cent of that is, every year, turning into black money, shared by government servants, business men and politicians. More the welfare, more the black money, and greater the destruction of the work ethic.
In the pursuit of power, winning elections by spending huge sums has become necessary. These sums can be generated by the vast amounts of money spent on “welfare”.
The discourse about welfare and the trickle that reaches the poor — they get the crumbs — acts as an opium for the political class.
For whom politics is the profession and government power is the goal, welfare and the poor are the enablers. Welfare spending for the poor cannot be criticised on moral grounds. It can be shown to be the instrument for aggrandisement by a few.
We are not building an egalitarian society. Wealth is being created by the educated and enterprising. Much of it is accruing to politicians in power and their businessmen cronies getting at the levers of power.
This is not good for the country. Ignoble people are choosing politics as the least risky profession to get government power and using it for accumulation of wealth, keeping the poor opiated by trickles of welfare.
( The author is Chairman, Pragna Bharati, Andhra Pradesh.)
Comments:
This is plainly like pouring money in a bottomless pit.. Eminent
statesman and patriot Rajaji brought out a scheme in the early post
independence years for primary and secondary education even as pupils
were learning family’s technical skills. He was wrongly branded as one
perpetrating caste system. The same however was marketed in modern
language by Britain’s New Labour through the concepts of Knowledge
Economy percolating to the poor! Here now at home, the NAC, a
euphemism for the Durbar of the Dynasty has produced schemes such as
the one under discussion in the article which puts tons of good money
after bad projects. Plainly this is the price all of us are paying to
keep the Dynasty in defacto power. The Congress Party is slavishly
supporting such grandiose schemes because it will enable them to make
moneys through leakages from these schemes. When, sooner or later the
Dynasty and the Congress are thrown out of power through electoral
process, the country will be rendered bankrupt.
The article has brought out the negative effects of NREGA and how it is adversely affecting farming activities on account of exorbitant wage hikes and indolent work culture. The scheme increases income without increase in utilities/income generating assets.Hence the inflation and FMCG companies flocking to market their product in rural areas. It has already resulted in making farming unviable.The disastrous consequences can be seen already in the form of crop holidays and the future of farming is bleak.And with food security coming up and farm productivity stagnant, the warning of impending disaster is clear. For garnering votes, politicians are ruining the economy irreparably.
I am from rural village area and regularly seeing people sitting idle on the roadsides and having no useful work to do which is called NREGA work. Indeed there is no any meaningful work available in villages other than farming. NREGA is taking people out from farming and make them unproductive and push them to liquour shops. I am against wasting tax payers money, NREGA is the worst ever govt. scheme affecting the lifeline of agriculture and food productiviy of India.
I am closing watching The Mahtma Gandhi Nrega schemes in rural areas of Bihar.The main concern is not the money being spend on nrega, but its implementation in spirit is really a gargatuan task.Nrega is labour oriented scheme and its focus is on invisible works,it must be dovetailed with other schemes to create visible and durable infrastructure which will be value for tax-payers money.
What's new in this? All Govt sponsored schemes are for the politicians & by the politicians. Politicians spend a lot of their time innovating how to drain Govt treasury to fill up their own coffers so that no questions are raised. More such schemes do come in future squeezing every lawful citizen of their savings increasing the tax burden. This will continue without any benefits passed on to every honest tax payer.
The above article shows clearly the utter arrogance,callousness and bankruptcy of the author's social knowledge, or any 'knowledge' for that matter. I wonder how an esteemed newspaper like Business Line, known for its high level of intellectual persuasiveness, could publish such an article.
The data provided by the author are not more than the information from roadside GK guidebooks. If he is so much concerned about the NREGA, migration of workers and social problems, I suggest him to read some quality books. To start with he must read the latest article on the so-called crop holiday in AP, published in EPW's last week's edition. Secondly, he needs to read the non-elitist history of the world, specifically the work of the Latin American neo-Marxists.
In addition to that he needs to understand the impact of LPG in India in the past two decades.
I think this should suffice for him now, for a beginner in the understanding of the social world.
LET THE SCEME CONTINUE, THE EMPLOYER MUST SEE THAT THE WORKERS WORK.
The work force if suitably used can create wonder in building a modern india.Make them work for viable projects and in farms, the farmers can get a relief and workers job, and the govt can claim social security. The problem is with implementation , not the project is bad.
The scheme must be supervised under a special IAS/IPS officer and monthly audit and inspection schemes make sure money is not wasted.
The problem of rising wages, when the educated privilege draw thousands a day, why cant a labourer earn a few thousands a month?
DONT BE A HYPOCRYTE.
There is a high pressure marketing of this costly Food Security Bill. Today an article in the media points out as an argument for this white elephant -if the private sector borrowers could create a non performing asset of several lakh crores, what is wrong in making a dent of some 25000 crore through this food bonanza. Hardely a way of >selling this scheme. It i also arguend that this scheme will shape the destinay of this land for many eyars to come. Yes, only with a slight modification,. Schemes such as this will land the already strained government into bankruptcy. I is plainly intended to boost the stock of the dynasty at the cost of the tax paying public.
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