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The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), the UPA government�s flagship job scheme that provides 100 days of work in a financial year to every rural household, will now be called the Mahatma National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
The new name will be unveiled on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi on Friday, a rural development ministry official told HT. Thursday�s cabinet approval paves the way for the government to bring an ordinance to adopt the new name, which will be ratified by Parliament during its winter session in November.
The name change is aimed at preventing state governments from taking credit for the scheme. The Centre has expressed concern over attempts by opposition-ruled states � particularly by UP chief minister Mayawati and her Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar � to publicise NREGA as their own programme by printing their pictures on the job cards.
The Congress is seeking a revival in both these states.
Senthil comments -
Actually, the very concept of this NREGA is flawed. This programme can be rightly called as Rural Destruction programme. IF we see all the works done under this scheme, all are like putting a pinch of salt in the sea. None of them are really productive work, nor it helps the community or the people.
The detrimental effect is that, NREGA collapses the work ethics of the people. WIth Rs.2 per kg rice scheme, and 100 days NREGA, most of the workers, lost the incentive to work. Two days of work is enough to buy the rice at 2/kg. So for any agricultural work, they dont come forward to work..
There is no accountability in these works. Just for the sake of work, some unproductive works are chosen. In normal course of society, when a land owner employs the workers, he expects a productive work, and a result at the end of the day.
In case of NREGA, there is no ownership of the scheme or the work undertaken. The workers usually work in a complete leisure, and lethargic. In my region, in many villages, simply a layer of clay for around .5 to 1 feet is scrapped and then this work is added to NREGA scheme.
The fate of farmers is now left to fend for themselves. Everyone knows that agriculture is a labour intensive work, even when machinery is used. By driving away from farmers, the very fundamental of our society gets broken.
Its akin to giving incentive to factory workers not to work there. What if the government comes up with a plan to provide employment to all IT employees, with 10% higher salary than the current one, along with reducing the dollar value. The present NREGA scheme is like that.
The government considers people as only votebanks, and NOT as a society. That's why, it doesnt care how much the farmers suffer or commit suicide.
I often suspect that this very scheme itself is a conspiracy.. by driving away workers away from farmers, it will make farming unsustainable. THis will force farmers also to move away from agriculture, which will create a food crisis. By artificially creating a food crisis, the government plans to take over land in the guise of Special Agricultural Zone, without any resistance. A sure plan to alter the very fundamentals of our society from diverse participatory one, to a corporate one like america.. a kind of medieval european fuedal society is being created.
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