Now to make it work

THE FORMAL LAUNCH of the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana, the new Rs. 10,000-crore food-for-work programme, sets at rest all speculation that this was going to be yet another scheme that was announced with much fanfare but would not see the light of the day. In fact, it must be a record of sorts that less than six weeks separate the announcement of the programme by the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, from the ramparts of the Red Fort on August 15, and its formal inauguration, also by Mr. Vajpayee, in a Uttar Pradesh village last week. Such speed is to be appreciated, especially since this programme is meant for the most disadvantaged sections of Indian society. Indeed, if there must be a question it must be why it was not launched earlier, considering the continuous build-up in public food stocks over the past three years. Now the challenge is to make the SGRY work. A food-for-work programme was always the ideal solution for combating under-nutrition and low employment in the backward or drought-affected areas - not to mention its role in creating rural assets. However, three problems have always plagued rural employment programmes - massive leakages, non-payment of minimum wages and construction of assets which do not last beyond the next monsoon. Where there has been success in all three respects, it has been only in the presence of an active local government and beneficiaries who have refused to be short-changed. The SGRY too will be administered by local bodies and the true test of its success will be in its ability to replicate isolated success stories on a national scale. This is easier said than done; but it would have been a crime if fears of a failure had persuaded the Government not to make at least some use of the cereal mountain which now stands at 62 million tonnes.

The SGRY will be a Rs. 10,000-crore annual Centrally- sponsored programme. In addition to the 5 million tonnes of grain, valued at Rs. 5,000 crores, which will be given by the Centre free of cost to the States, the Centre will meet 75 per cent of the cash component of Rs. 5,000 crores. This should go a long way towards making the States more enthusiastic than they have been in the past about food-for-work programmes. The inability of the State Governments to find the financial resources for meeting material outlays and the cash component of wage costs has so far resulted in a poor off-take of grain allotted free of cost to the States.

Impressive as the new food-for-work programme appears in financial outlay, it is not entirely a new scheme but an expanded and consolidated version of existing programmes. For now, two of the current employment programmes - the Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana and the Employment Assurance Scheme - are to be merged into the SGRY. The two rural employment schemes had a Central Government budgetary allocation of Rs. 2,925 crores for 2001-02; while in a full year the SGRY would receive budgetary support of Rs. 3,750 crores. This is an increase but not as large a jump as has been made out. There is, of course, the cost of the 5 million tonnes of grain which the Centre is going to absorb every year, which at the minimum will involve Rs. 5,000 crores being funded to the Food Corporation of India. All said and done, this is not a time to carp at the launch of yet another poverty alleviation scheme but an occasion to use the opportunity to make a tangible dent on under-employment and under-nutrition in some of the poorest regions of the country and at the same time make a difference to rural infrastructure in these areas by drought- proofing, watershed development, afforestation and the construction of school buildings, all of which are activities to be taken up by the SGRY.

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Section  : Opinion
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