Flagship Projects of UPA - NREGA

National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) or NREGS is an Act enacted on 25th August 2005 by India government to bridge the economic gaps between different strata of people by aiming the rural unskilled people living in rural India below poverty line. Another major point was to demotivate large scalle immegration of people from villages to towns. This also aims at empowering women by making sure that at least 1/3rd of the total working force is women.

NREGA provides a guaranteed 100 days employement every financial year to one adult member of a rural India household in which he / she is supposed to do unskilled manual work in public domain at statuary minimum wages. The scheme has been started on 2nd Feb 2006 with 200 districts out of the total 593 in India

Note - Dr. Jean Dreze (Belgium Economist) at Delhi School of Economics played a very important role in this.

Outlines of the Act

1. Central Government is responsible for meeting the payment of the wages, 3/4th of the material cost and a small portion of the administrative cost.

2. State Government is responsible for meeting the unemployment allowances, 1/4th of the material cost and a remaining administrative cost.

3. Gram Panchayat holds the responsibility of registering people, inquiring about them and issuing job cards to the eligible person. Job card has the photograph & other details of the person.

4. After registration with Gram Panchayat, the person will submit application for work (for minimum 14 days continuous work) to the panchayat or programme officer. They will finalize the application and send the work letter. If employment is not given within 15 days of recieving the work application then unemployment allowance has to be paid to the person.

5. Wages will have to be given to the person if the distance between the place of work and the palce of residance is more than 5 kms.

Now this has been a big scheme of the government with the budgetry allocation of more than 10,000 crores in 2006-07 budget, so what do you think is this a signal or noise.

According to me this can definitely turn into a very positive signal and people are feeling a lot more relaxed with this kind of employment guarantee. Although they have a few demands like doubling the number of days of employment but they definitely want government to continue with this scheme as this has given them some hope to survive in a time where the inflation is about to reach as high as 12%.

Regards,
Anurag Jain

6 Core Principles of Common Minimum Program

1. To preserve, protect and promote social harmony and to enforce the law without fear or favour to deal with all obscurantist and fundamentalist elements who seek to distrust social amity and peace.
   
   
2. To ensure that the economy grows at least seven to eight per cent per year in a sustained manner over a decade..and more and more and in a manner that generates employment..so that each family is assured of safe and viable livelihood.
   
   
3. To ensure the welfare and well-being of farmers, farm labour sand workers..particularly those in the unorganized sector and assure a secure future for their families in every respect.
   
   
4. To fully empower women politically, educationally, economically and legally.
   
   
5. To provide for full equality of opportunity particularly in education and employment for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, OBCs and religious minorities.
   
   
6. To unleash the creative energies of our entrepreneurs, businessmen, scientists, engineers and all other professions and productive forces of society.
   

Has this government delivered on these or not?

Issues raised by UNPA

The BSP, TDP, CPI(M), CPI, FB, RSP, JD(S), RLD, INLD and JVM together decided to launch a joint national level campaign on following issues -

1. Inflation and price rise
2. Agrarian crisis and its effect on farmers
3. Against nuclear deal
4. Against communal forces
5. Against misuse of government institutions like CBI by the government

So what you think, are these mere noises or genuine signals with certain meanings?