Editorial | Take Time to Change NREGA

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), more commonly referred to as NREGA, has been the mainstay of rural empowerment all over India. In the Kashmir Valley, where unemployment and economic woes still ravage rural areas, the scheme is even more important. However, its ability still lies dormant because of poor implementation, a lack of transparency, and absence of accountability among workers. It’s time for a sober pause a shared moment to reflect, reassess, and re-align the goals of this flagship programme.

NREGA was initiated with a lofty purpose: to offer 100 days of assured wage employment to rural families ready to engage in unskilled manual work. In a state such as Kashmir, with an agriculturally dominant population and repeated work disruptions because of conflict, climate or administrative hold-ups, such a security blanket is not merely desirable it is vital. But even as the money is being spent year after year, the visible outcomes are spotty at best.

All over the Valley, reports are coming in of uncompleted jobs, ghost workers, bloated muster rolls, and under-employed labour. Whole sections of rural roadways from link roads to irrigation canals and flood defence bunds lie from repair or are constructed shoddily. NREGA jobs are undertaken in many areas merely to demonstrate movement on paper. The gap between funds expended and the effect on the ground is glaring.

The cause of the trouble is the absence of responsibility. Although the scheme properly insures employment to the jobless, it fails to ensure that the employed work efficiently or long-lastingly. NREGA workers are rarely held accountable for slippages, absences, or below-standard implementation. The field functionaries, such as Gram Rozgar Sevaks and technicians, frequently close their eyes to aberrations. When no one is accountable, inefficiency prospers.

Accountability does not concern punishing employees, it’s about making the system work. There is an urgent need to implement monitoring systems that monitor employee attendance, project progress, and quality inspections. Most states in India have already moved towards real-time data collection through mobile applications and geo-tagged images of works done. Kashmir must emulate them. Digital muster rolls and biometric attendance can significantly cut scope for corruption and enhance transparency.

Additionally, local Panchayats and Block Development Offices should be empowered but checked. Social audits, a compulsory component of NREGA, are hardly ever taken seriously in the Valley. When they are done, they tend not to have public engagement and become mere formalities. Real social accountability will only arrive when community members themselves ask questions regarding the works being carried out in their name.

To achieve a NREGA transformation, honesty of implementation is the essence. Political interference needs to be avoided. Workers need to be sensitised that the work they are given is not an act of favor but a right, and that with every right there is a responsibility.

Panchayats need to be trained to design projects that are meaningful those which address long-term community needs rather than cosmetic patchwork. Over all, the culture of ‘free money’ without accountability needs to be discarded.

There also needs to be a system of performance-linked incentives. Villages or blocks that continually produce quality NREGA works within time should be publicly identified and even rewarded with extra funds.

 Non-performing areas, on the contrary, should be audited rigorously and corrective action taken.

More importantly, NREGA cannot be viewed only as a poverty-reduction programme. In Kashmir’s weak economy, it could also serve as a growth engine. Suppose NREGA money went into constructing flood-resistant embankments, rainwater harvesting structures, or green roads with honesty. It would not only generate employment but also fill important environmental and infrastructure gaps in the Valley.

Now, when rural Kashmir youth are moving away from physical labor and more and more toward urban migration or passive online activities, programs like NREGA can become a key to bringing back dignity to rural labor. But that is possible only if workers are able to observe their work producing concrete, durable benefits.

In short, the government has to hit pause not on NREGA, but on its path. Let this be a pause for NREGA change. Let this be the time when workers’ accountability is the anchor of rural development in Kashmir. With transparency, local involvement, and honest monitoring, NREGA can do what it was designed to initiate change on the ground in the lives of the rural poor.