‘Reframing NREGA a criminal neglect’

Abdul Hafees

27/10/2014

New Delhi: Seminar held at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi strongly condemned the attempts made by the Modi-government to reframe the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The new decision would only reduce its benefits and render people workless, said Nikhil De, social activist based in Delhi.

“The people who are below the poverty line who hardly get jobs in its primary stage receive only a minimum wage with no increment thereafter,” says De. “However, those, above the line lacking the basic livelihood means living in rural areas also feel they are neglected from the employment scheme whereas the government is not concerned about their situations as well,” he accused.

The NREGA employment scheme was passed in 2005 when the first UPA government was in power. The well-appreciated employment scheme, aimed at boosting “the livelihood security by providing at least one hundred days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every rural house,” have further received much criticism for various forms of corruptions in a couple of states so far.

Nithin Ghadkari, Minister for Rural Development, had announced before that the government would consider revising the NREGA by limiting the number of its beneficiary villages from 645 to 200, and saving the required revenue for the machinery in terms of the work that has been done by employees, to stop the exploitation in this scheme’

“Minimising its beneficiaries is not the way to end corruption. It is a criminal neglect towards the work rights of the poor and destitute people, De added. The government should streamline the programme taking cognizant of the basic living means of the backward people living in remote areas,” De argued. “And the proceedings should be frequently verified in order to make it scam-free and ensure its expected outcome in different states of the country,” he added.

 De also asked why some senior journalists are in a hurry to jot down the impact of this scheme to a great extent, while at the same time they ignore the ample irregularities piled upon it.

Inside those four painting-packed walls

Can you imagine some students lodging string of protests against a prime ministerial candidate in the highways of his own constituency packed with his strong supporters? Yeah!. It was what some students from Jawaharlal Nehru University did while the BJP national council announced the prime ministerial candidature of Modi who is allegedly responsible for the communal violence happened in a state wherein he was the CM before.

Holding the intellectual ideology unto its chest and boasting of its inherited left-leaned politics; JNU draws the attention of every countryman who is eager to listen to the electoral response and ideological discourses in this campus as it could cast its shadow also all over the national politics. This ideological dissimilarity has transformed this campus to be hectic with intellectual discourses over every issue nationally and internationally controversial.

One should wonder for a while if one comes to see the students here in this campus announce their messages and ask for votes at the time of election being joyously playing drums and holding bombardments of debates with their “rivals”. Here in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus, things are like these for many years; elections have always been creating a tumultuous atmosphere of slogans but the commotion never steps up to be violent.

What makes the JNUSU (Jawahar Lal Nehru Students Union) election different is that party activists are shuttling to and fro to circulate the pamphlets prepared by them not only over those issues that arise inside the four painting-packed walls of the campus but also regarding every socio-political concerns of the whole country. And the students initiate many social welfare works across the states in India, like the recently collected relief funds from the campus and outside for the J&K flood victims.

JNU’s this year election battle was getting hot with moves afoot by students' fronts of every national political party to wage a war. And they all are well aware of the political situation in the country as the previous Loksabha poll was reflected the Modi wave across the country, and the government was then just completed its hundred days being waded through a quagmire of communal polarisation.

The pamphlets distributed here through the mess, garden and the passages also play a vital role to make the policy announcements for the parties, which dealt this time with the issues like the lack of hostel facility, anti-GSCASH movement, democratic higher education, students’ scholarships, and move against the administration. Meanwhile, the national issues debated over here were the Modi-government reforms and communal violence followed in some states.

When the results came out, the JNUSU opted to remain for one more year with the All India Students’ Association (AISA), under the Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist. AISA. It won all four posts in these union elections. Ashithosh Kumar, was elected as the president of the JNUSU, Anant Prakash Narayan the Vice-president, Chintu Kumari the general secretery, and Shafqat Hussain the joint secretary.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a party that had never been in the fray of central panel elections until now, took surprising second seat in two. Student Federation of India (SFI), under the Communist Party of India-Marxist, couldn’t “recover its lost charisma followed some issues”. The SFI activists admit the failure was “due to a split within the party”. The split in the party had triggered a breakaway wing and they stood under a new umbrella named LPF comprising the All India students Federation (AISF) of the CPI and the Democratic Students Federation (DSF).National Students Union of India (NSUI) of the Congress also called by the students an “election party” for it was seen only at the time of election, tasted a grim failure “as usual”, prompted Saidalavi, phd candidate in Arabic.

The newly elected president Ashithosh Kumar said that the cradle of the leftist ideologies, JNU, has been left-leaned all the time. the other defeated parties were only for pursuing an opportunist ideological- political line. AISA believes, that 'the religion should be separated from politics as it is a personal concern'. he added. 'We have always kept our ideology and never deviated for the time being like all other parties did', Ashithosh claimed.