Farm works under NREGS a snipe hunt by KCR?

​Hyderabad: Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s efforts to bring agriculture works under the purview of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) may prove to be a wild goose chase as it involves several stumbling blocks including amendment to the Act. 

It involves more expenditure than at present and the budget being allocated to NREGS will not be enough to meet the demand. If implemented, agriculture works will deprive other works of money and defeat the objective of the Act, according to sources. 

The issue of including agriculture works in the NREGS has assumed significance in view of the Chief Minister reiterating his demand for inclusion of agriculture works in NREG. He wanted agriculture works like harvesting and sowing to be included in the scheme so that farmers could benefit from the scheme, at the Rythu Bandhu programme launch. 

However, officials and experts told The Hans India that implementing the idea of the Chief Minister involved several problems and the Centre should take a policy decision in this regard. They pointed out that already the Legislative Council of Telangana had adopted a resolution demanding the Centre to include agriculture works in NREGS. 

The NREGS has been launched to provide employment to unskilled workers of rural areas in the country. The scheme envisages using the labour of unskilled workers to create assets that would be useful for future generations. 

Lakhs of unskilled rural people are now using the scheme extensively and about Rs 1,500 crore is paid as wages to them every year in Telangana. Assets like buildings, check dams, CC roads and others have been created through the scheme. 

Rising labour costs in rural areas have led to the demand of including agriculture works in the NREGS. Some farmers’ associations have demanded that the governments include agriculture works in the scheme. The State government also accepted the demand. 

Experts of the NREGS scheme said the Act should be amended to bring agriculture works into the purview of NREGS. The Act states that works of repetitive nature are not allowed in the scheme. 

Any works being taken up under the scheme should create an asset which would help the development of rural economy. Agriculture works like harvesting, sowing and plowing do not come under the scheme as per the Act.  If agriculture works are included in the scheme, they would take away the lion’s share of funds, resulting in insufficient money for other works. The Centre has been spending Rs 50,000 crore per annum on an average on the scheme and if agriculture works are undertaken under the scheme, this amount needs to be raised substantially. 

If the areas of land being cultivated, number of days required for agriculture works and wages of workers are taken into consideration, the amount needed to fund the scheme runs into thousands of crores for every season. 

The Centre should amend the Act of the scheme so that the works like agriculture activities could be taken up. This needs Centre’s intervention and it does not seem to be so keen about it. 

When the State government raising the issue with the Centre in the past, the Central officials pointed out the issues involved in it. They told the State government that a lot of discussion was needed on the issue.