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Three northeastern states – Mizoram, Tripura and Sikkim – topped the country in the just-concluded 2016-17 fiscal year in providing work under the rural jobs scheme, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), while two others – Manipur and Assam – are at the very bottom in its execution, an official report has revealed.
The MGNREGA, which is considered a pioneering rights-based legislation in the world, was introduced in February 2006 by the then Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government.
The scheme aims to generate rural assets and create rural infrastructure like roads, ponds and water reservoirs. The average wage rate was Rs 161.87 per day per person in the last financial year.
“Women workers on an average got 55.98 days of work across the country in the last fiscal. Of the 262,252 gram panchayats all over India, no work was provided in 19,434 gram panchayats in 2016-17,” said the performance report, available with IANS.
The three northeastern states’ repeated success in providing work is attributed by experts to the lack of any other such scheme and absence of major industries in the region.
Jayanta Choudhury, head of Tripura (Central) University's Rural Management and Development Department, said:
"In Tripura, due to good governance, efficient implementation and good work-wise and ward-wise monitoring also contributed to the success of MGNREGA," he added.
Choudhury, who has written books on rural development in the northeastern states, said that implementation of centrally sponsored schemes (CSS) is also good in some of these states.
Allocation of funds and timely release of the central share of funding under MGNREGA is also a big issue in the North-East.
Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar has claimed that the Centre is trying to scuttle MGNREGA even though his government has been demanding 200 days of work in a year under the scheme.
"In the outgoing financial year, Tripura has provided around 80 man-days of rural jobs per household under the MGNREGA, but in the current financial year (2017-18), as per the indication of central allocation, the state would be able to provide only 38 to 42 man-days of jobs per household under the scheme," he added.
A senior ministry official, who recently visited Tripura to study the implementation of the scheme in the state, denied the central government had planned to scuttle it.
To demand the required allocation so that Tripura could provide more than 90 days of jobs, Sarkar asked state Rural Development Minister Naresh Jamatia and the three members of Parliament from the state to meet Union Rural Development Minister Narendra Singh Tomar in New Delhi at the earliest.
"We have already communicated to the Union Rural Development Minister about our desire to meet him. We expect that the proposed meeting is likely to be held next week," Jamatia told IANS.
(This article has been published in an arrangement with IANS )
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