"UPA Mocks at Unemployment Problem"

India in 1947 had two roads of development open before it, the road of Telengana and the road chosen by the ruling classes. The model they chose for India was the path of imperialist dependent development and they could choose no other for they were compradors of imperialism.

As a fall out of that model, India’s economy is fashioned not around people’s need, not for self-dependent development, but for facilitating imperialist loot. Consequently Indian people have lived with unemployment and underemployment. There are poor indices indeed about the size of the problem at different periods of time due to faulty census methods, limited scope of unemployment registration offices, and so many other drawbacks. Secondly, essential to the unemployment question is land concentration in the hands of 20% in the villages, with attendant landlessness or inadequate land, placing on agenda the urgent need for land distribution on the principle of land to the tiller.

Since the ‘New’ Economic Policies (NEP) set in (since the 1990s), the situation has steadily worsened. While land distribution and welfare of peasant masses never figured on the agenda of governments irrespective of their colour, NEP years represent years of active closure of industry, of public undertakings, of VRS schemes – essentially attacks on production. WTO years since 1995 (especially with Agreement on Agriculture) represent similarly an assault on the peasantry also. The severity of the dimensions of the unemployment problem in India is represented not only by the rising statistics of the government but also by the deluge of weavers' and peasants' suicides from so many parts of India.

Since the past ten years or so, vacancies have an increasing trend to be announced only in security forces and army. Lakhs apply for hundreds or tens of posts, with the result that Rajasthan, Haryana and Bihar gave examples of stampedes during selection procedures leading to deaths of youth in the process of just looking for employment! Lately, Indian government’s sop to Kashmiri youth’s demand for jobs was concretely 10,000 jobs in security forces per year.

"Non-Shining of India"

NDA Government in its later days did manage to sense this large vote bank and Vajpayee declared an aim of creating a crore jobs in an year. He obviously did not. By election time NDA under Advani was pushing across shining India with NRIs, rising FDI, attractive stock market and GDP figures. The election results showed that people were quite clear that India did not shine. Congress in the meanwhile had campaigned in  the elections promising employment for all.

"From Poll Promises to Fooling the People "

This background tells the milieu in which the Congress led UPA Government wrote a Common Minimum Programme (CMP) promising an employment guarantee act. An Employment Guarantee Act derives from the welfare state’s assurance of right to work for its citizens and theoretically has nothing directly to do with poverty removal schemes, though it will obviously help in the latter. The Congress without bothering to think or bother about the impact on citizens, gave this election promise when it is fully committed to pro-imperialist policies which can only really guarantee underemployment and unemployment to the vast majority.

From here began the farce. From an universal employment guarantee scheme, the UPA began talking of a 100 days employment guarantee. From an universal employment guarantee scheme, it was a scheme sent to the rural areas and that too only the least developed ones. A logic was developed about what the people would do for the other 265 days. The government said that an agricultural labourer gets work on an average of 70 days per year (pre-imperialist globalization it was 120 days). Adding this 100 would mean he/she would get 170 days of work per year. Thus they would only be unemployed for 195 days a year!

Then few impediments were thought of. If a scheme was open to the entire rural unemployed, it would provide ‘legal lacuna’ for urban youth to go to courts for employment rights. The more operative question they tossed responsibility on was money. How would such a scheme be financed? – especially at the minimum wage implicit in this scheme and enthusiastically promised so as an election mirage. The second question was, which government would take responsibility for the guarantee of employment and thus foot the bill of unemployment allowance? As a compromise of all these aspects has sprung the NREGA Bill which has been tabled in Parliament on 21s December 2004 accompanied by minor rumblings from within the UPA itself.

"NREGA: The Great Deception"

The Bill as it has been now tabled, is restricted to 150 blocks in India which will be those where schemes for food for work are already on. These are not right to employment schemes, but schemes like Indira Rozgar Yojna, Jawahar Rozgar Yojna and others which are essentially poverty alleviation schemes, set up in areas of extreme poverty and which are getting state construction projects executed at a pittance in a terrible inversion of the concept of people’s participation in construction. There have been reports and reports of these yojnas entailing hours and hours of work in sun beaten drought hit areas where women are forced to avail these yojnas to feed the hungry and feeble at home. It is here that the Employment Guarantee Act will go and no doubt it will feed from the same funds.

A second issue is of the nature of the ‘guarantee’. It is extended to one adult member only of any Below Poverty Line (BPL) household, who will volunteer to do casual manual work. On the one hand, very casually, it leaves it to the state and Central governments to extend household entitlement beyond 100 days should the project allow so. The other aspect is, there is no guarantee of extension, but the guarantee “is only in such rural area in the state and for such period as may be notified by the Central government.” It does not even specify that the Central government will not notify for less than a 100-day period.

Leaving aside all other weaknesses of the Act, there is this question of criteria. It will be extended to one member per household. In this itself lies a major fallacy. What about the dependent women, dependent youth? What about women headed households within the joint families? What about widows, discarded first wives living within the family structure? Has this government or any government any right to thrust such a mockery of the terrible situation of the people at them as a ‘right’? Second is the question of BPL households, i.e., ones with red ration cards. What does BPL have to do with real poverty figures in India? There are criticisms galore which make it quite clear that by a simple method of diluting criteria, poverty figures have been brought to less than half of what they were. What is the real face of poverty is another matter. Poverty line is determined by the cereal consumption per week. The figures of the Government of India tell that per capita net availability of pulses is less than half of that in 1950. Rate of growth of output of coarse cereals in post-NEP years is zero (population rising). And the FAO has said that between 1997 and 2001 the number of hungry in India has increased by 19 million. It is also widely quoted in the media that in the entire Dharavi slums – the biggest slum in Asia – there are only 150 BPL cards! An important fact about ‘BPL’ categorization must be remembered. The BPL card as a concept in the FPS system came at the urging of IMF-WB.

"No Guarantee for Minimum Wage"

Let us move to the question of wages. Wages will be paid per week apparently but never later than a fortnight. Delays in payment will be entitled for compensation under Payment of Wages Act! (which cannot even be implemented in the cities). But this too is not the worst mockery. No discrimination in wages is going to be made on the basis of gender for payment. None by the way will be made in employment provision either – apart from the vast sweep the government has already achieved by restricting it to one job per household. If women still flock to work it will be due to the poor wages. Because no minimum wage will be paid for work. “Central Government by notification may specify the wage rate for purposes of the Act.” It should be known that the Cabinet debate started with the payment of the agricultural minimum wage applicable for the state but was diluted to this. The real aim, therefore, will be to make the scheme so unattractive that only those totally dependent or destitute (may be widowed women or aged people) will be left for the scheme.

"Handover to Panchayats"

50% projects or more are going to be handled under the leadership of the gram sabha and through the gram panchayats – those agencies of dominance of rural rich and landlords. Each panchayat (in these 150 blocks) will prepare a development plan and make project proposals. The programme officer will be responsible for implementation of these schemes at block level. All adults (one per BPL household) who are willing to do casual manual work will “register” with the gram panchayat (not forgetting the level of village literacy and how panchayats treat the unorganised poor). The gram panchayat will “make enquiries” i.e., verify the veracity, no doubt at a price as it does for everything else. Then, for free, it will issue a job card that will bear the photograph and particulars of the applicant (all this for 100 days of work at less than minimum wage). This registration will be valid for a period of not less than 5 years.

Within 15 days of receipt of (not 'submission of', another scope for corruption) application, employment has to be given to the applicant. In the application itself there has to be a commitment for willingness to do at least 14 days of continual work in a month. The gram panchayat has to take up every valid application and issue a date of receipt.

Information about the employment allocated will be given in writing and will be displayed on the board of the gram panchayat. It will be given with a 5 k.m. radius; if further, it will be within the block and 10% of the fixed wage will be given additionally. After 15 days of receipt of application, the person is entitled to unemployment allowance – one-fourth of the wage for 30 days and half of the wage thereafter. If a letter is sent calling someone for employment and it is not responded to, the person will be debarred for three months from unemployment allowance.

There are other fanciful frills about provision for compensation in case of injury, safe drinking water and child care facilities at place of work, a first aid box present there, and compulsory periods of rest during the work day. No “labour displacing machines” will be used and no contractors will be employed etc. etc.

An important point to note amidst all these frills – which are there in all government schemes and everyone knows that not a sentence can be implemented except through struggles – is that all the operative parts of the scheme are in ‘schedules’ attached to the main Act. It immediately means that the Central Government can modify them without going through the procedure to modify the Act itself.

"This is Not Employment Guarantee"

Howsoever the UPA Government may word its position, the reality is this is a mockery of the Congress’ electoral promise to the people. This is no employment guarantee scheme (not even for unemployed of 150 blocks) – and there is no provision of any commitment to develop it or extend it to the whole of India. Then how is the Bill to be viewed?

The UPA draft that went to the Cabinet promised extension of the scheme to the whole of India within 5 years and that wages would be the minimum wage for agriculture in the given state. However, even that draft did not promise an universal guarantee scheme accessible to all, enforceable by courts. Actually to expect ruling classes to bring one is itself naive – CPM has not brought one in the state it has ruled for over quarter of a century. The reason is that the employment generation is linked to economic policies of self-dependent growth and of development of people which ruling classes of India do not stand for at all. Even in states where some sort of employment scheme is in way, e.g., Maharashtra, being quoted by Central Government, the per day unemployment allowance is Rs. 2, i.e., Rs. 60 a month!

Now several intellectuals are pitting the UPA draft against the form tabled and confining the entire question to one of the virtues of the UPA draft vis-à-vis the other. This will take off pressure from the government also.

The youth and unemployed of India must build struggles for a universal employment scheme of jobs for all. Even more necessarily they must take up the need for changing the route of development of India and join forces struggling for New Democratic Revolution.

Many intellectuals are waxing eloquent about this Bill as part of poverty alleviation schemes in India and justifying it or not justifying it on the basis of Keynesian policies. The point is any Employment Guarantee Scheme is based on a separate right. They are correct to the extent that the current Act is actually one more newly named Rozgar Yojna and will meet the same end.