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
I see more and more examples of this----if there is a problem to which society/govt implements a solution, the solution in turn will always generate a new problem........whether it is social problems, environmental problems or any other large problem. There is no pure solution to any large problem. This shortage of agricultural labour due to NREGA has been mentioned by quite a number of people, but I don't have references.
ReplyDeleteIn the Nilgiris, all tea estates have become unviable due to labour shortage. Most people have sold their estates to Tata or one of the other large companies and some to Tantea. This is OK for a commodity like tea, but if this happens with rice or wheat, and all rice growing is done by say only Monsanto, god help us!
Thank you for your comments L. As you would expect there is more to the story than I have mentioned above. Perhaps I will write about yet another complication to the problem in a second post.
ReplyDeleteBut one important addition to the above is, It is not only the MGNREGA that is taking away farm labour, it is also availability of new options like Hyundai etc... There is a point of view that the MGNREGA has actually liberated many Dalit women from oppressive treatment by the farm owners. The Bigger farmers get their work mechanised or bring in labourers from neighbouring villages. It is again the Dalit farmers and small ones that suffer. I am glad that the TN gov's move is focussing on those small landowners.
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ReplyDeleteAlways all are taking about MGNREGA has made labour problem but at the same time what about the Industrialization .
do you know the MGNREGA has made increase in Agricultural production and also reduced Migration.
Mgnrega Privides only 100 days of employment to a family in the 365 days. what about the remaining 265 days .
So the problem is planning and implementing in the lean season.
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Thank you suki. I will visit your blog .
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