Introduction: Despite a Parliamentary
Committee slamming the Employment Guarantee Bill, the government couldn’t
care less. With Sonia Gandhi herself changing tack, will Manmohan Singh’s
obduracy
Persist?
It’s finally official. Thirty-one MPs, cutting across partylines, all members of the Parlia¬mentary Standing Committee on Rural Development, have endorsed the main criticisms against the ‘National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill, 2004’ Almost each state government has favoured the correctives suggested by National Advisory Council (NAC) and the Left. It is not only those lampooned by the corporate media as “jholawalas” or the usual suspects in the Left, but MPs and state governments who want a better Bill. In a pre-emptive move, on the very same day that the House panel submitted its report, Sonia Gandhi stepped in to seize the political initiative. The government was, in any case, on the backfoot as NAC colleagues Aruna Roy and Jean Dreze took it to task through a nationwide yatra.
Worried at the Left’s growing legitimacy (especially in the wake of the Gurgaon police brutality against workers) as UPA’s conscience-keeper and greater champion of the Common Minimum Programme, and in a bid to salvage the sagging image of the Congress,- Sonia Gandhi threw her weight behind some of the main correctives sug¬gested. Her initiative was expected¬ly greeted by the English press with screaming headlines denouncing this so-called ‘competitive pop¬ulism” with the Left that would hurl the country towards financial ruin.
To fulfil one of the key promises made in the National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP), NAC submitted a Draft Bill to the Government on August 15,2004. The Left welcomed this but for the rather heavy financial and legal burden it put on already bankrupt state governments. Yet the Bill tabled in Parliament so diluted the original NAC Draft as to make a mockery of the very notion of a guarantee. Faced with severe criticism from the Left, NAC members and activists, a Group of Ministers (GoM) was formed. This Bill was referred to Parliament’s multi-party Standing Committee on Rural Development, which submitted its unanimous report on July 27, 2005.
Hailing it as “one of the most im¬portant Bills introduced in Parlia¬ment after Independence”, the Committee is deeply critical of the Bill, both in terms of the process of drafting the Bill and its provisions. Given that the state governments will not only implement it but are also required to bear a part of the cost, the Committee is surprised that they were not formally con¬sulted. It therefore invited their views, along with those of experts, organisations and individuals. Thereafter, the Committee recom¬mended substantive amendments to the Bill.
These recommendations include universal eligibility without the below-poverty-line (BPL) criterion; individual entitlements; time bound extension to the whole of rural India in four years; irre¬versible guarantee without ‘switch off’; statutory minimum wages under all circumstances without subjective criteria for quality and quantity of work; mandatory pay¬ment of an increased unemploy¬ment allowance; 100 percent Central funding; payment of unemployment allowance by states, except when funds are not devolved by Centre; no penal dis¬qualification from unemployment allowance; central role to panchay¬ats; a more flexible and gender¬-sensitive list of works, to be deter¬mined by states and panchayats; far more stringent punishment for non-compliance.
Sonia Gandhi suggested that the Congress Party move amendments that ensure universal entitlement for all rural adults; remove the switch off” provisions; give a Central role to panchayats; and full Central funding. Under pressure, the GoM has agreed to some impor¬tant correctives. However, even as it concedes significant space, the GoM rejects four crucial recom¬mendations of the House panel. It is shocking that each of the pro¬posals rejected by the GoM emanate from state governments and women’s organisations and have the approval of the Standing Committee. The first is individual entitlements, which is gender-just, fair and simple with the least pos¬sibility of corruption. The difficul¬ties in calculating 100 days at the household level, rationing within households or resolving disputes arising from this is an administra¬tive nightmare. The second is that while a case may be made for phased implementation, the Bill must make a commitment for time bound extension to the whole of rural India, be it four or five years.
The third is the centralised and rigid definition of permissible works, which will make it very diffi¬cult to generate work quickly. It will also rule out key development ac¬tivities like the construction of so¬cial infrastructure, maintenance of assets and services like sanitation, etc. Besides making it less accessi¬ble to women or creating work that reduces drudgery, it is not location-¬specific and robs panchayats of their initiative. There must, there¬fore, be a flexible and broad defini¬tion of permissible works.
The fourth plea of the states is that keeping in view their bankrupt¬cy and specifically when the scheme is of the Union government, it should be fully funded by the Centre, unlike the present formulation, where they are expected to meet 25 percent of the material costs, unem¬ployment allowance, administra¬tion, work-site facilities and social security. While states should be accountable and pay the unemploy¬ment allowance once the Centre has provided funds for the scheme, it should be the Centre’s liability if funds have not been devolved.
Differences over these four demands reflect a fierce debate on macroeconomics. Neo-liberal opponents and supporters are guided by pre-Keynesian fiscal orthodoxy, hinging on a scarcity of rupee resources and superiority of zero or low fiscal deficits. Unwilling to discipline the elite to mobilise resources, they prescribe a restrict¬ed scheme. In contrast, reliance on employment generation and the home market through deficit financing for non-inflationary growth in a situation of excess capacity and unemployment constitutes the main plank of the Left line of argument.
The government must explain why,
despite very sound arguments in their favour, it rejects these recommendations.
Sonia Gandhi ha,, given a clear signal to cheek the pur¬suit of the
increasingly anti-people and unpopular neo-liberal policies. Can UPA afford
to ignore her and leave matters to the Raj-struck prime minister, who hailed
the “good governance” of the British Raj in Britain? They must remember
that a failure to live up to this most important promise of the NCMP might
see them scurrying out of office as quickly as they came in.