Corruption is not all

Corruption is not all

The programme planners of employment programmes -- call it Sampoorna or Guarantee -- measure their success only by the number of days of employment created. Their objective is to distribute wages for work, to avert famine: commendable, but limited. Each year, the same district spends on drought mitigation, building assets that are not maintained. egs is relegated to drought relief, not relief against drought. It does little for development. It does little for poverty reduction. This when its potential is enormous: using the labour of the poor to regenerate the rural ecosystem.

The problem is that because planners are obsessed by employment creation, they are obsessed by corruption in the creation of employment. Most research on employment programmes has focused on the lack of transparency and accountability in schemes. According to researchers Dev and Robert E Evenson, the cost of transferring one rupee under the erstwhile jry was Rs 2.28 in the mid-1990s. They compared it to Rs 1.85, the cost of transferring Re 1 under the Maharashtra egs. These researchers found that in the different employment schemes, the routine use of contractors, fudging of employment rolls and violation of norms lead to huge costs in delivery and extreme inefficiency. They estimated that in the three states of West Bengal, Haryana and Gujarat, the cost of generating one day's employment was Rs 200 to Rs 300, far in excess of the wage rates given to the poor households. In addition, government's own evaluation shows that only Rs 15 of every Rs 100 reached the beneficiaries. Leakages were enormous and crippling.

This has meant an obsession -- perhaps rightly so -- on reducing leakages by increasing the power of people to check muster rolls and scrutinise the wage records. "Corruption is not unexpected when money is involved and the transaction is between officials, who have the power and control over the money, and the poor unemployed labourers who have little choice," says Atanu Dey, a developmental economist. In the current National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme the effort is to improve decision making through the use of the Right to Information Act, which gives local communities rights to check wage records. There are also plans for social audits and financial checks to plug the holes.

The problem is that even with all this done, a water structures remain a hole in the ground because the catchment has not been treated. A tree remains a hole in the ground because the saplings have not been protected. A road remains what it was -- a collection of holes in the ground -- because it has not been built to last. It has been built to be washed away. Each season, so that employment can be guaranteed.

The fact is that the history of employment creation programmes in India is not new. But researchers and planners have never bothered to evaluate what has worked, why and how. The last institutional innovation was made in the early 1990s, when funds and responsibility were transferred to locally elected bodies. Since then the programme has spent Rs 2,000 crore annually in the early 1990s, to Rs 4,000 crore annually in the early 2000 and now Rs 11,300 crore under the National Rural Guarantee Scheme. The fact is that nobody knows where this money has been spent; on what programmes, in which village and if the assets created have been maintained or not.

The current programme is built on the developmental imperatives of the different districts. But it does little to address the key institutional and management gaps that exist in programmes of soil, water and forest conservation. These are fragile assets. These assets require management and maintenance. dte reporters have found that even with some basic investment, the returns can be enormous. One good water harvesting structure built pre-monsoon can lead to enough soil moisture to grow a supplementary crop. Many soil and water conservation programmes can transform village economies.

There are instances where this has happened. But these instances are too far and too few between. The problem is that we have not learnt to create institutions by people, that can deliver for people. In the entire work on rural employment, while governments glibly talk of the role of the panchayats, little has been done to build institutional capacities so that these agencies can function. There is little expertise and little use of perspective plans so that developmental imperatives can become employment objectives. 12jav.net12jav.net