The cat is actually out of the bag and it is not purring but there is a loud roar. However it seems the sound is lost in the din of the more interesting other social and political dramas that is being staged in the state. It was recently that the Medziphema Village Council alleged lack of transparency in the utilisation of funds and embezzlement under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Act by the department of rural development. More seriously, the village council also stated that it will no longer be signing blank cheques that are normally given earlier meant for the department's "mobilisation funds".
An allegation by a village council in Nagaland is rarely untrue and the current implications are actually quite serious. An exposure of such nature will see many ramifications if it was in any other state in the country even causing instability in government. However in Nagaland, it is also one of those schemes where there is a hidden consensus to collectively take part however irregular and false the data might be. The MGNRG scheme also comes under one of those if-not-availed-then-it-goes-back schemes in the states.
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Act came into effect in 2005 with the sole purpose of generating employment opportunities the rural areas of the country. The Act guarantees minimum 100 days of employment for every household in the rural areas in one financial year. The minimum wages was initially set as per Section 3 of The Minimum Wages Act, 1948 for agricultural labourers and it was one of the guiding principle for the fixation of wages for the employment .
The MIS reports of Nagaland indicates a fluctuation in the persondays (aka mandays) from as low as 89.98 lakhs in 2014-15 to the 273.15 persondays in 2016-17 in the last four financial years from 2013-2016. The total numbers of gram panchayats or in the case of Nagaland the villages stands as 1241. The total number households that worked is between 4.06 lakhs as to 4.19 lakhs. The only puzzle is that there are just 396002 households in the whole of Nagaland according to the Census of India 2011. The report also indicates that the total number of individuals worked is between 4.52 lakhs and 5.33 lakhs in the last 4 financial years. If the number of persondays is compared with the total individuals worked then the average days worked comes to less than 55 days and in one particular year it is hardly 20 days. It is just an indication that the math does not work out giving a picture of the status of the scheme in the state.
There have been instances of inflated job card numbers being projected, thus resulting in the high number of households that is more than the census figures. There were allegations of employed persons and even government employees availing job cards in the state. The low density of population along with increase in mobile population, villagers who have seasonal places of residences, are factors that come into play. Therefore the percentage of those villages that actually benefitted both in terms of development and employment would be highly debatable. Like any other central scheme that works for the rest of the country but impractical in the state if implemented exactly and in totality, the national employment scheme might have actually failed in its actual mission in the state. The amount spent would have instead benefitted the state in so many other forms of development but for the useless and almost mandatory forced projects just to avail the scheme in many villages in the state.
