The NREGA Act 2005 guarantees “legal right of a hundred days of wage employment in a financial year to adult members of a rural household who demand employment & are willing to do unskilled manual work”. This is a report from the 4th people's audit on NREGA organized in India. One key finding - only 7 women were employed!

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) was notified in 200 districts in Feb 2006. The rules of act are thoughtfully devised to counter the inefficient and corrupt practices prevalent in implementation of such a reform seeking new programs with huge public money investment.

The key provisions are:  1. Works be given on demand 2. No contractors and any machinery be recruited for carrying out the works 3. Muster rolls of work be maintained on the work site itself 4. Payments should be made on every seventh day 5. The social audit should be carried out by people’s involvement and facilitated by administration. These provisions put the intentions, capacity and methodologies of rural administration under test.

People have shown great interest to participate in Social Audit of the scheme- Three efforts of Social audit of NREGS are conducted in India so far- 1. Dungarpur (Rajastan) by Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan 2. Anantpur (Andhra Pradesh) by state government 3. Dist.Palamu , Block Gadwa State Jharkhand , on the initiative  lead by Jean Dreze.

The fourth Social Audit is arranged in Hardoi district, from 25^th Nov to 2^nd December. Bharawan and Sandila are two blocks where Asha & NAPM volunteers are conducting grass root exercise of scrutinizing the transparency and accountability in NREGS.

Two months prior to the audit, the relevant information was asked about the progress in five blocks Sandila, Bharawan, Kothawan, Behender Khurd, and Kachouna in Sandila Tehasil of Hardoi District.  We sought information about: 1. number of job cards issued 2. Number of works completed / under process 3. Copies of Muster roll 4.Measurement books 5.Sanctioned Money & Money spent 6.Monitoring committee functioning.

Its a shame that the information was not made available for 2 months. Due to pressure created by social audit initiative we have taken, the officers gave consent to share ‘some’ documents. Finally on the day when Social Audit began, i.e. 25^th Nov ; only 2 muster rolls were given to us.  To our great surprise, the muster rolls, a document for basic detailing of day-to-day work and payments; were being filled in the block office itself when we arrived. Actually, they are to be maintained at Work site it self. The ink of thumb prints on originals is still to dry. For Sandila Block, 45 muster rolls of works completed in 45 Gram Panchayat were given. For Bharawan block, 25 muster rolls out of 51 works carried out in 25 Gram Panchayats were received. (Sandila Block consists of 56 Gram Panchayats and Bharawan Block has 51 Gram Panchayats). We received only two measurement books so far; payment has to be made after engineer verifies the measurement books. It is showing that payments are made on muster rolls, a lot of which are probably fake without MBs being completed. .  Because of this irregularity, a release of payment shown on muster roll itself is contradictory .

Even if the administration provides all the documents properly, the fudging is still possible. That can be audited only by reaching out to people at grass root and creating leadership, awareness around the accountability and transparency issues. But in case of Hardoi, there is a failure at the primary level of providing the information on implementation.  The officers did not take social audit by people very seriously, Asha Parivaar & NAPM are intervening in the situation.

Block Development Officer Sandila - Mohammad Nafees began to participate as the pressure was built, he and DDO Hardoi -Premchand Dwivedi addressed the training of Social audit arranged for the participants on first day.  The Commissioner appointed by Supreme Court for ensuring peoples’ right to food, helped us to access the information.

On the inaugural day 175 activists took part in training session. Arundhati Dhuru (Advisory to Commissioner appointed by Supreme Court for ensuring peoples’ right to food), Shankar (MKSS), Mohammad Nafees (BDO-Sandila), Premchand Dwivedi (DDO Hardoi) oriented people about the provisions in the act and scheme. Volunteers from seven UP districts, Asha Volunteers and MKSS team members (who have vast experience of conducting such an audit) participated, they were trained by showing specimens of muster rolls and also received the valuable insight of processes involved.
 
The action for next few days was planned in afternoon session- activists were divided in 10 teams and they will go across to 44 villages where works are carried out. We are trying to get as much information from surrounding villages, so that our social audit has massive impact on NREGS implementation in Hardoi.

The budget estimate of proposed works plans under National Rural Employment Guarantee in Sandila Block of Hardoi district in UP is Rs.8,15,76,106 of which only Rs.1,20,53,100 have been received during the ongoing year. 687 works were proposed out of which 84 have been initiated and total of Rs. 74,07,200 have been spent. Total of 13,812 job cards have been issued and 9260 workers have obtained work of which 4198 were SCs and there were only seven women who worked as part of NREGS. The NREGA provides for 33% women employment as per schedule 2, Para 6.

Among 84 works initiated in the Sandila Block 82 works are that of rural kuchcha roads and only 2 are water conservation related works. On 9^th November 2006 the Chief Development Officer of the district has directed the Block Development Officers, who are also the Program Officers of NREGS, that there has been an over emphasis on road works whereas the government of India has given priority to Water Conservation, Land Development and Tree Plantation under this scheme.

On 22^nd November, 2006 the BDO has written a letter to all Village Development Officers that they must pay Rs.10 to all families who have affixed the photographs on the Job Cards at their expense because it was Government’s responsibility to get the photographs done for each family who desired a Job Card. But there is hardly a family in Hardoi District who received this cooperation from the District Administration or got the Rs. 10 back to compensate for the amount spent on getting the photographs made. If the administration decides to compensate for the photographs then the worker families should be compensated for Rs. 1,38,120.

All these information have become available during the ongoing Social Audit of the NREGA in Hardoi District. There is a rumour in the area that all the Gram Pradhans stopped their works under NREGA when they came to know about the proposed social audit. There logic was that if there were no works accomplished then what would the audit team examine. This was verified by the information made available from the Block Office. The amount spent on NREGS in the Block till 16^th October, 2006 is Rs. 71.863 Lakhs and no works have been performed since then, whereas in the month prior to this date Rs.25 Lakhs were spent!

For more information, Please contact Arundhati Dhuru (9415022772), Mahesh (98385469000, Vallabh (9415256848), Harshavardhan (9322696617)