National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Social Justice System

NREGA badly needs
a social justice system

Sachin Kumar Jain

Law has been made, claims have also been made that now every rural family has a legal right to employment under revolutionary National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) but the truth is that at the ground level the law was totally violated and the Act has remained outside the purview of our judicial system. In Madhya Pradesh average 4000 complaints are coming out from the grassroots, but a legal system to redress these complaints is still awaited. It is with mentioning that NREGA has a closest link to Laborers and their Labour rights, but there is no co-relation is seen with Labour Department and Labour Courts, because this structure has been kept out of the picture. When a Lok Adalat (people’s court) was held at Latehar district of Jharkhand for the first time in country to redress the problems of people regarding National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, thousands of people attended it and as many as 21000 complaints were received. The people representing the most deprived sections of society demanded dismissal of officers, their arrest and penalizing them with Rs 25000 each for failing to implement the scheme properly. Not only these demands were rejected by government, but also the issues of unemployment allowance and payment of compensation for failure of paying wages on time were also taken very lightly. This experience of the Lok Adalat proved that the judicial system related to social rights and welfare schemes should be made more effective at that level where it is closest to the villages and accessible to the most deprived sections of the society.The issue is coming up naturally that even without considering the issues of welfare rights, the district courts are burdened with lakhs of cases. As much as 84% of the cases in entire country are being heard at level of district courts and 74 % of these cases are criminal cases. It is a matter of surprise that presently, maximum of cases are being registered under section 138 (bouncing of cheques) or section or non-payment of installments against institutional loans. It is then a question that how much does these sections helps in achieving social justice. Now our arguement is that the district judicial process should be made a part of social justice process - operationally. The way the markets and capitalist forces are working, the judicial system is being used against welfare of people and the system is ignoring the ideology of social justice. Now there is a strong push to involve National and State Legal Authorities in creating system, so that a micro level authorized legal system could be created.I had a chance to attend such a training programme on the topic of `poverty and social justice’, recently, where judges of 100 district courts were present. When they were queried as to how they viewed the cases of poor and deprived people and whether any sympathetic or humanitarian approach was adopted, their replies showed their strict attitude. They said that they were emotionless and if they took sympathetic view towards someone in particular they would not be able to be unbiased. They had almost never registered any cases that defined social justice. The issues related to lands also do not go to them, as the revenue issues are resolved by district courts. Another point is that the district judges do not receive as much socio-political important as the district collector or the superintendent of police, because judges are not really connect to social rights. The matters of rights reach the court only when it becomes a crime. Thus it is imperative that the system should be made more practical and trustworthy in context of social justice. The NREGA (2005) gives any person living in a village in the country the legal right to have employment of minimum 100 days in a year. Under this scheme, the beneficiary has to demand work and the government – through various departments and gram panchayats – has to ensure employment for the applicant within 15 days of demand. This is a legal provision, but the experiences of last three years show that the rights to take action in case of violation of the rule have also been given to the government officials. They could not be considered unbiased in any respect. A study by Centre for Environment and Food Security, conducted in MP shows that more than 50% of the people did not get work even after demanding, which means that the law was violated right from beginning. The Law further states that the person who does not get work would be given unemployment allowance. In MP, during last three years, 16 lakh workers did not get work within due period but the only instance of payment of allowance was at Badwani in year 2007 that too after long drawn efforts by NGO Jagrut Adiwasi Dalit Sangathan. No other instance of payment of allowance was visible after that. In Karahal block of Sheopur district, more than 150 workers are demanding unemployment allowance since more than two years but the officials seem to have pledged to violate the norms. Several malnutrition deaths were reported form these villages but the government did not allow this provision of law to come out of red-tape bound files.Similarly, the ground level studies by the Madhya Pradesh Right to Food Campaign showed that in nine districts there was not a single example where the workers got wages within a week of finishing work as per rules. The rules were completely ignored.If one talks about participation of community in framing of schemes, even this rule was not implemented. The law also gives the gram sabhas the right to conduct social audit of the employment guarantee scheme, but in MP the gram sabhas were ignored and NGOs were given this responsibility. All these things prove that the scheme is in force but the law has become unimportant. This is a big danger for the employment guarantee scheme. We have to understand that the department, administration or government, which has the responsibility to implement a law, would not be unbiased in matters of discrepancies. The system would try to protect its parts – under an objective.Now the question is whether every worker could approach the High Court or the Supreme Court. The answer is no. Since right to employment is a legal matter, it must be ensured that the block or district level, the cases pertaining employment guarantee act should be considered in two ways - Either on basis of complaint or suo-moto. In specific context of MP, it has been seen that in cases of corruption and irregularities related to EGA, the panchayati raj representatives are being removed by using the section 40 of the Panchayati Raj Act. The most negative impacts of these actions are on the women, dalit and tribal sarpanchs. The important thing is that under section 40, the bureaucrats in MP have the rights to remove the elected representatives (sarpanchs) from their posts. In context of EGS, it has been seen that sarpanchs who are illiterate or belong to deprived categories are being used as pawns for corruption and the action was initiated on these representatives. Now the question again is that how many sarpanchs can approach the High Court. How many workers should believe that their legal rights would get legal protection? The big challenge is to ensure that the respect and confidentiality of the society towards the law should remain intact. Thus we need to make our judicial system simple and social, sensitive and bring it closer to people.