AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 13237 - The Deepening Crisis in MGNREGA Wage Payments

In 2009, I became extremely concerned with the concept of Unique Identity for various reasons. Connected with many like minded highly educated people who were all concerned.

On 18th May 2010, I started this Blog to capture anything and everything I came across on the topic. This blog with its million hits is a testament to my concerns about loss of privacy and fear of the ID being misused and possible Criminal activities it could lead to.

In 2017 the Supreme Court of India gave its verdict after one of the longest hearings on any issue. I did my bit and appealed to the Supreme Court Judges too through an On Line Petition.

In 2019 the Aadhaar Legislation has been revised and passed by the two houses of the Parliament of India making it Legal. I am no Legal Eagle so my Opinion carries no weight except with people opposed to the very concept.

In 2019, this Blog now just captures on a Daily Basis list of Articles Published on anything to do with Aadhaar as obtained from Daily Google Searches and nothing more. Cannot burn the midnight candle any longer.

"In Matters of Conscience, the Law of Majority has no place"- Mahatma Gandhi

Ram Krishnaswamy

Sydney, Australia.

Aadhaar

The UIDAI has taken two successive governments in India and the entire world for a ride. It identifies nothing. It is not unique. The entire UID data has never been verified and audited. The UID cannot be used for governance, financial databases or anything. It’s use is the biggest threat to national security since independence. – Anupam Saraph 2018

When I opposed Aadhaar in 2010 , I was called a BJP stooge. In 2016 I am still opposing Aadhaar for the same reasons and I am told I am a Congress die hard. No one wants to see why I oppose Aadhaar as it is too difficult. Plus Aadhaar is FREE so why not get one ? Ram Krishnaswamy

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.-Mahatma Gandhi

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.Mahatma Gandhi

“The invasion of privacy is of no consequence because privacy is not a fundamental right and has no meaning under Article 21. The right to privacy is not a guaranteed under the constitution, because privacy is not a fundamental right.” Article 21 of the Indian constitution refers to the right to life and liberty -Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi

“There is merit in the complaints. You are unwittingly allowing snooping, harassment and commercial exploitation. The information about an individual obtained by the UIDAI while issuing an Aadhaar card shall not be used for any other purpose, save as above, except as may be directed by a court for the purpose of criminal investigation.”-A three judge bench headed by Justice J Chelameswar said in an interim order.

Legal scholar Usha Ramanathan describes UID as an inverse of sunshine laws like the Right to Information. While the RTI makes the state transparent to the citizen, the UID does the inverse: it makes the citizen transparent to the state, she says.

Good idea gone bad
I have written earlier that UID/Aadhaar was a poorly designed, unreliable and expensive solution to the really good idea of providing national identification for over a billion Indians. My petition contends that UID in its current form violates the right to privacy of a citizen, guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. This is because sensitive biometric and demographic information of citizens are with enrolment agencies, registrars and sub-registrars who have no legal liability for any misuse of this data. This petition has opened up the larger discussion on privacy rights for Indians. The current Article 21 interpretation by the Supreme Court was done decades ago, before the advent of internet and today’s technology and all the new privacy challenges that have arisen as a consequence.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP Rajya Sabha

“What is Aadhaar? There is enormous confusion. That Aadhaar will identify people who are entitled for subsidy. No. Aadhaar doesn’t determine who is eligible and who isn’t,” Jairam Ramesh

But Aadhaar has been mythologised during the previous government by its creators into some technology super force that will transform governance in a miraculous manner. I even read an article recently that compared Aadhaar to some revolution and quoted a 1930s historian, Will Durant.Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajya Sabha MP

“I know you will say that it is not mandatory. But, it is compulsorily mandatorily voluntary,” Jairam Ramesh, Rajya Saba April 2017.

August 24, 2017: The nine-judge Constitution Bench rules that right to privacy is “intrinsic to life and liberty”and is inherently protected under the various fundamental freedoms enshrined under Part III of the Indian Constitution

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the World; indeed it's the only thing that ever has"

“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” -Edward Snowden

In the Supreme Court, Meenakshi Arora, one of the senior counsel in the case, compared it to living under a general, perpetual, nation-wide criminal warrant.

Had never thought of it that way, but living in the Aadhaar universe is like living in a prison. All of us are treated like criminals with barely any rights or recourse and gatekeepers have absolute power on you and your life.

Announcing the launch of the # BreakAadhaarChainscampaign, culminating with events in multiple cities on 12th Jan. This is the last opportunity to make your voice heard before the Supreme Court hearings start on 17th Jan 2018. In collaboration with @no2uidand@rozi_roti.

UIDAI's security seems to be founded on four time tested pillars of security idiocy

1) Denial

2) Issue fiats and point finger

3) Shoot messenger

4) Bury head in sand.

God Save India

Monday, April 9, 2018

13237 - The Deepening Crisis in MGNREGA Wage Payments - The Wire

The Deepening Crisis in MGNREGA Wage Payments

For 2018-19, there is no increase in the MGNREGA wage rates of ten states.

File photo of MGNREGA workers. Credit: Reuters

Ankita Aggarwal

LABOUR

08/APR/2018

On May 1, 2016, many workers of Jharkhand returned Rs 5 to the prime minister – that year’s increment in the state’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) wage rate – to register their protest at the meagre increase. On the next Labour Day, they returned Re 1 – the amount by which the MGNREGA wage rates of Assam, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand increased for 2017-18. Luckily for the workers, this year they will not have to return any money.

For 2018-19, there is no increase in the MGNREGA wage rates of ten states – Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Mizoram, Nagaland, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Some of these states are amongst the poorest in the country, where millions of rural workers fall back on MGNREGA when there is no other employment available in their area. But increasingly unremunerative wage rates, together with long delays in payments and denial of compensation in case of the delays has turned many workers away from the employment guarantee programme.

Unremunerative wage rates

Currently, MGNREGA wage rates of 29 states and union territories are less than their corresponding minimum wages. The gap is greatest in the Northeastern states of Tripura and Sikkim, where MGNREGA wages are only about 59% of the respective state’s minimum wage, followed by Gujarat (65%) and Andhra Pradesh (68%). The divergence between the two wage rates began in 2009, when the Central government activated Section 6(1) of the employment guarantee act to delink MGNREGA wage rates from the Payment of Minimum Wages Act. Since then, a situation of illegality is created wherein MGNREGA workers of several states are made to work at less than the minimum wage rate. As the employment guarantee act requires the Central government to bear the entire financial burden of MGNREGA wages, states are unwilling to use their own resources to ensure payment of minimum wages (with the exception of Bihar which spends some money to reduce the difference between the state MGNREGA wage rate and the state minimum wage).

In 2009, the Central government also capped MGNREGA wages at Rs 100 per day in nominal terms. With steep price increases, the real value of MGNREGA wages began to fall. To arrest this decline, the government implemented the emergency recommendation of the Central Employment Guarantee Council’s “Working Group on Wages” to index MGNREGA wages to the price level by using the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers. However, it did not revise the base wages, leading to stagnation of MGNREGA wages in real terms.

In 2015, the Mahendra Dev Committee recommended revising the base wages to the 2014 minimum wage rate or the MGNREGA wage rate of that year, whichever was higher. This committee also recommended switching to Consumer Price Index for Rural Labourers to adjust MGNREGA wages to the price level as it better represents the consumption basket of MGNREGA workers. This recommendation was repeated by the Nagesh Singh Committee constituted the following year to once again advise on the matter of MGNREGA wage rates (among other issues). Both times, the Ministry of Finance shot down the recommendation, presumably due to the financial implications. From 2012-13 to 2016-17, while the all-India average nominal MGNREGA wage rate increased from Rs 135 to Rs 176, the corresponding increase in the real MGNREGA wage rate was only Re 1.

Delays in wage payments

The real value of MGNREGA wages is further eroded by long and unpredictable delays in wages payments. MGNREGA wages are to be paid within 15 days of the work being done. From 2013-14 to 2016-17, less than half the Fund Transfer Orders (FTOs) – electronic payment advice for MGNREGA wages – were generated and signed on time. There are no official estimates of the full extent of wage payment delays, as the ministry considers wages to be paid once the FTO is signed.

Independent researchers have estimated the time taken till the crediting of wages in workers’ accounts. Based on an analysis of more than nine million wage payments made in 2016-17 across 10 states of the country, Rajendran Narayanan, Sakina Dhorajiwala and Rajesh Golani found that only 21% of the wage payments were made on time. They repeated their analysis for four million wage payments made from April to September 2017. This time they found a timely payment rate of 32% (as opposed to the official claim of 85%).

Many workers do not receive their wages at all, due to reasons such as administrative lapses and fraudulent withdrawal of wages from their post office or bank account. The mandatory requirement of linking the implementation of MGNREGA with the Management Information System (MIS) of the programme and Aadhaar has engendered new reasons for non-payment of wages. For instance, mistakes in entering details such as workers’ attendance, bank account number or Aadhaar number in the MIS can cost them their wages. In case of errors in seeding of Aadhaar numbers with bank accounts, workers’ wages can get credited in someone else’s bank account. Due to poor enforcement of norms of transparency and accountability, workers are seldom able to complain in case they do not receive their wages. Redressal of their grievances is even more rare.

Denial of compensation

As per the employment guarantee act, workers are entitled to compensation in case they do not receive their wages within 15 days of the work being done. The compensation amount is to be recovered from the functionaries whose lapses result in the delays. As per the initial provisions of MGNREGA, the rate of compensation was to be decided as per the Payment of Wages Act. This was later done away with and the rate of compensation was changed to 0.05% of the pending wages, per day of delay. Further, the ministry only calculates delays in the payment steps to be completed by the states, so till the FTO is generated and signed. It does not calculate delays in the steps which take place afterwards, which are the responsibility of the ministry itself and the payment agencies (banks and post offices). This has allowed the ministry to frequently withhold the approval of FTOs for weeks – even months in some cases – due to lack of funds, failure of states to comply with administrative requirements or other reasons that are not clear.

The compensation amount is automatically calculated by the MIS and electronically approved by the programme officer. The bulk of the compensation is rejected by these functionaries, as approval would require them and their colleagues to pay the compensation amount. Also, only a part of the approved amount is actually paid to workers. From 2013-14 to 2017-18, only 4% of the calculated compensation was approved and only 61% of the approved amount was paid.

Why the crisis

Much of the crisis in MGNREGA wage payments stems from the government’s unwillingness to allot an adequate budget for the employment guarantee programme. The most damning evidence of this is a Ministry of Finance document of August 2017 which states that if workers were to be compensated for the full extent of wage delays, it would significantly increase the government’s financial burden.

After stagnation – and even a fall – in Central government expenditure on MGNREGA from 2010-11 to 2013-14, expenditure on MGNREGA has increased over the past four years. However, this increase is only in money terms, and is just about 0.3% of the country’s GDP. Last August, the Ministry of Rural Development demanded an additional Rs 17,000 crore to supplement the initial MGNREGA budget of Rs 48,000 crore for 2017-18. The Ministry of Finance approved only Rs 7,000, that too in January 2018. As mentioned above, to ration the inadequate funds, the Ministry of Rural Development frequently delays the processing of FTOs for wage payments. This year’s MGNREGA budget is only Rs 55,000 crore – the same as last year’s total budget in nominal terms.

Since the Central government failed to dilute MGNREGA through covert measures such as restricting it to the poorest districts or reducing the wage to material ratio, it has resorted to underfunding the employment guarantee programme. MGNREGA now functions more as a project to meet the infrastructural requirements of other government schemes – such as Swacch Bharat Mission, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana and the Integrated Child Development Services – than as a right to work programme. Legal entitlements of workers are disregarded on the pretext of improving quality of assets and curbing leakages. It is hoped that the opposition parties, media and civil society is able to expose the central government’s lack of commitment towards the most marginalised rural workers in the months leading to the next general election.

Ankita Aggarwal works with the secretariat of the Right to Food Campaign.