More than 400 acres of land go uncultivated this season in Kuthambakkam village of Tiruvallur District. This village is some 40 km from Chennai, in Tamilnadu. ‘Much of this is a side-effect of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)’ says former panchayat chief R. Elango. He has been working with this scheme since 2007. ‘This is the first time I have seen fields filled with water but going uncultivated, it is a shame,’ he adds. Kuthambakkam village is only one case in point. The situation is similar in many villages in India. The reason it seems is the drifting of regular farm labour towards the alternate employment offered under the MGNREGA. However, there are changes planned from this budget year in the scheme. Tamilnadu is seeing both an increase in the allotment of funds and a reallocation of work.
The MGNREGA was introduced in the year 2005 and comes under the ministry of rural development. It is a scheme designed to support labourers in villages by offering them guaranteed employment for 100 days in a year. The work consisted of deepening water bodies such as ponds, streams and rivers in public land. Aimed at creating assets for the village communities, the MGNREGA comes as a blessing. One reason is that employment opportunities are per se scarce in villages. The second is employment on farms is itself dependent on the season. However the ministry of agriculture raised a protest that this scheme eats into farm labour by taking them away. This in turn led to a labour crisis in farms, they said. To resolve this, the minister for rural development Mr Jairam Ramesh announced that in the budget 2012, provisions will be made to build jobs compatible with agriculture into the MGNREGA scheme. These include work such as rice cultivation, soil conservation, building shelters for cattle and poultry etc.
The ensuing budget reflected these changes. Tamilnadu alone has been sanctioned 5000 crores for the MGNREGA for the year 2012-13. This forms about 15 percent of the total, which is 33000 crores. This is a large fraction of money. It reflects that Tamilnadu exhausted nearly 82 percent of the total money allotted last year. According to K. P. Munusamy, Minister for Local administration, Rs 3675.31 crores was allotted for Tamilnadu in the year 2011-12. Of this the amount spent was Rs 3000 crores, which comes to 82 percent. The reward for this efficient utilization of funds is the increased allocation for 2012-13.
In addition there are changes planned for the way to utilize this money. In earlier years, the work had been restricted to deepening water bodies in public lands. From 2012-13, the range will be extended to include farms owned privately. Minister K.P.Munusamy, speaking in the assembly (9 April 2013) said lands of 8 lakh dalit farmers, 16 lakh small farmers and 1.5 crore marginal farmers will come to be included in the MGNREGA from this year onwards. This inclusion of farmlands is expected to reduce the above mentioned crisis of land going uncultivated
12 April 2012
The earthquake off Sumatra came and went and though it was a pretty scary few minutes when the buildings rocked, it went without giving rise to death or destruction, unlike its predecessor in 2004. It was a major relief with the Tsunami Warning Systems all in place and thankfully no Tsunami.
What is going to be our stand after experiencing this tremor in Chennai. After effects of a 8.6 Richter earthquake .. what are the implications for development even in our environments and also importantly what are the implications for the Nuclear power plants planned in these regions?
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