“A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends….. The future beckons to us…. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India;... to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman. We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be.”
– Jawaharlal Nehru, 14-15 August 1947
The “time to redeem our pledge”, not just “substantially” as at the time of Independence, but “wholly and in full measure” and “make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be” seems to have come and gone again. Through a fortuitous combination of circumstances, which activists believed was unlikely to ever occur again, a National Employment Guarantee Bill that was to provide 100 days of work to one member from every rural household seeking work came before Parliament during this winter session. Activists believed that it was ‘now or never’. The moment came, but the country has again failed to keep its pledge. The Bill could not be passed during this session. Anyway, it was so watered down that the ‘guarantee’ it promised was no guarantee at all and even if passed, it would have been a non-starter. “The Bill is just another employment scheme,” says Jean Dréze, one of the initiators of the campaign and member of the National Advisory Council, “and a travesty of the draft prepared by the National Advisory Council itself, let alone that prepared earlier by the people.”
There was a groundswell of support for this Bill from every nook and corner of the country, the first of its kind since the Independence movement. Several organisations agitated for the right to work, including a full-fledged Employment Guarantee Act, on 10 December (Human Rights Day). These included demonstrations, padyatras, signature and post-card campaigns, public meetings, symbolic registration for work at block and district offices, and more. All-India organisations involved in this effort already include the All India Agricultural Workers Alliance, All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU), All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti (BGVS), National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW) and New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI), among many others.
In a true show of unity in diversity, more than 100,000 signatures were collected on saris, one from every district of the country, before and on 10 th December, Human Rights Day, by several organisations across the country demanding the passage of the Bill. The ‘sari’ banners were tied together and fluttered along Parliament Street of Delhi on 21 st December in a creative public display of “people’s voices from around the country”. It is surprising that the reasoned voice of these groups, calling for a re-orientation of the nation’s priorities in favour of meeting the basic needs of the masses, is being heard at all above the din in the country today over non-issues.
One is reminded of what Gunnar Myrdal wrote in the sixties regarding the paradox in India of the tremendous amount of work waiting to be done in the countryside, in terms of environmental rejuvenation – de-silting of tanks and lakes, watershed development, rain-water harvesting, land development, afforestation, etc. – and the millions of hands waiting for work at the same time. The time seemed to have come at last to bring these two together. The same would apply to urban areas where there is any amount of urban environment rejuvenation work crying out to be done while there are any number of under-employed and unemployed workers in the city’s burgeoning slums. However, the current draft Bill did not cover the urban areas.
The key, “non-negotiable” features that are demanded under the Right to Work include a permanent and universal work guarantee, extension to the whole of India within three years, payment of minimum wages in all circumstances, central government funding, safeguards for the interests of women, decentralised implementation, and full transparency at all levels, among other features. These are the very features that have been now so diluted in the government’s draft Bill.
In the National Common Minimum Programme, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) committed itself to implementing a national Employment Guarantee Act (EGA) for at least one able-bodied person in every rural, urban poor and lower middle-class household. The present National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill (NREGB) 2004 are however targeted to “poor rural households” only. “This is contrary to the fundamental principle of universal entitlement and self-selection,” say campaign activists. The current formulation is fraught with danger as it could be confined only to those families registered as falling below the ‘poverty line’. One is aware of the quixotic manner in which this classification is made. However, the draft allows the extension of the entitlement to every adult, in some or all areas of India, ‘through suitable provisions’.
As against the original guarantee of gradually extending EGA to the whole country within five years, the draft now says that the Act “shall come into force immediately in such areas and for such periods as may be notified” and shall be extended to cover all the other rural areas after evaluating the implementation in the chosen districts. This will allow the government to switch off the EGA any time and anywhere it chooses. The extension to the remaining areas is not automatic after a certain period of time, but conditional. Activists say that this is not only a licence to restrict guaranteed employment to a few chosen districts, and to postpone further extension arbitrarily, but it also means that the central government will have a stake in the failure of the Employment Guarantee Programme in the “districts chosen”, to avoid the financial burden involved in further extension.
The chief point that would ensure built-in failure of the Act is the one on bypassing the Minimum Wages Act, 1948. NREGB 2004 says, “Notwithstanding anything contained in the Minimum Wages Act 1948, the Central Government may, by notification, specify the wage rate for the purposes of this Act”. If wages less than the going wages in the area were fixed, it would ensure that none opts for this programme. It would also mean that the government could pay less than subsistence wages and become a master-exploiter instead of a model employer. Whereas, if there was a guarantee of minimum wages being paid, workers would flock to this programme making it impossible for private employers to get workers at less than minimum wages, which would have had the healthy effect of raising rural wages overall.
These dilutions have been made in addition to several others that were made to the original demands put forward by the Right to Work campaign group. For instance, the campaign draft wanted an open-ended number of days of work, up to 365, but the draft Bill sets a minimum of 100 days which can be extended further if the Central or State governments so desire. The campaign group is asking for half of the minimum wage as the unemployment allowance on failure to provide work within 15 days, but the draft Bill has left the quantum of allowance to be decided by the state governments, with a proviso that “no such rate shall be less than one-fourth of the wage rate for the first thirty days during the financial year and not less than one-half of the wage rate for the remaining period of the financial year”. The wage rate is that fixed by the central government and, whatever that is, it will not be the same as the statutory minimum wage. While the campaign demanded five per cent deduction from wages with matching grant from the government for the provision of social security, the draft Bill is silent on this.
In the National Advisory Council (NAC) draft, “productive works” were broadly defined as works that contribute directly or indirectly to “the increase of production, the creation of durable assets, the preservation of the environment, or the improvement of the quality of life”. This formulation would have allowed even the cooking of midday meals for school children or child-minding as productive works. This has been considerably narrowed down in NREGB 2004, where emphasis is placed on specific types of work.
The NREGB however has some good points. It is to be supervised and monitored by a Standing Committee at district level that will have civil society and stakeholder participation. The Standing Committee shall co-opt members of intermediate panchayats, gram panchayats, organisation of workers, women’s organisations, non-governmental organisations and disadvantaged groups as special invitees.
There is scope for bottom-up planning by the citizens. The gram panchayat is to prepare a development plan and take up works as per the recommendations of the gram sabha and the ward sabhas. The gram sabha is to monitor the execution of works within the gram panchayat and also conduct regular social audits of all the projects. The gram panchayat is to make available all relevant documents including the muster rolls, bills, vouchers, measurement books, copies of sanction orders and other connected books of accounts and papers to the gram sabha for the purpose of conducting the social audit. These provisions are indeed revolutionary and will give citizens a Right to information about works which they have been demanding for a decade now, under the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information.
In NREGB 2004, state governments are expected to pay for the “overhead” costs of the Employment Guarantee Programme, 25 per cent of the cost of materials, and the unemployment allowance. All state governments are under severe fiscal stress, and campaign activists feel that if State governments fail to come up with their share, the Scheme will be a non-starter. They want the Centre to fund the scheme fully.
Activists also fear that the initial limit of “hundred days per household per year” could lead to the marginalisation of women. They have been asking for individual work entitlements (e.g. 100 days per adult). In the absence of individual entitlements, they feel that at least 40 per cent of the total employment generated must be reserved for women.
The biggest hurdles to the passage of the Bill appear to be the finance minister and the Planning Commission deputy chairman who are known to have expressed the fear that this Act will “ruin the economy”. But as Jawaharlal Nehru asked at that fateful midnight: “Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?….That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken…..” Now, that seems not to be.
