Rural Department

Programmes under Rural Department:

1. MGNREGA (MAHATMA GANDHI NATIONAL RURAL EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE ACT):

OBJECTIVE OF THE ACT:

 The basic objective of the act is to enhance livelihood security in rural area by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual works. MGNREGA is a demand-driven programme where provision of work is triggered by the demand for work by wage-seekers.

GOALS:

i) Social protection for the most vulnerable people living in rural India by providing employment opportunities.
ii) Livelihood security for the poor through creation of durable assets, improved water security, soil conservation and higher land productivity.
iii) Drought-proofing and flood management in rural India.
iv) Empowerment of the socially disadvantaged, especially women, Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Schedules Tribes (STs), through the processes of a rights-based legislation.
v) Strengthen decentralized, participatory planning through convergence of various anti-poverty and livelihood initiatives.
vi) Deepening democracy at the grass-roots by strengthening Panchayati Raj Institutions.
vii) Effecting greater transparency and accountability in governance.

Thus, MGNREGA is a powerful instrument for ensuring inclusive growth in rural India through its impact on social protection, livelihood security and democratic empowerment.

KEY STAKEHOLDERS:
1. Wage seekers at village level.
2. Gram Sabha (GS) at village level.
3. Three-tier Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs), especially the Gram Panchayat (GP).
4. Programme Officer (PO)/ Block Development Officer (BDO) at the Block level.
5. District Programme Coordinator (DPC)/ Assistant District Prog. Coordinator (ADPC) at District Level.
6. State Government.
7. Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD).
8. Civil Society.
9. Other stakeholders (viz. line departments, convergence departments, Self-Help Groups (SHGs), etc.)

ACTIVITIES CARRIED OUT UNDER MGNREGA PROGRAMME:
1. Issue of Job Cards to the wage seeker.
2. Job Card verification.
3. Aadhaar Seeding.
4. Opening of Bank account.
5. Demand for work.
6. Allocation of works to wages earner.
7. Geo-Tagging of Assets created.
8. Preparation of Annual Labour Budget etc.

PERMISSIBLE WORKS UNDER MGNREGA PROGRAMME:
1. water conservation and water harvesting including contour trenches, contour bunds, boulder checks, gabion structures, underground dykes, earthen dams, stop dams and springshed development;
2. drought proofing including afforestation and tree plantation;
3. canals including micro and minor irrigation works;
4. Provision of irrigation facility, dug out farm pond, horticulture, plantation, farm bunding and land development on land owned by households specified in paragraph 1C of Schedule I;
5. Renovation of traditional water bodies including desilting of tanks;
6. Land development;
7. Flood control and protection works including drainage in water logged areas including
deepening and repairing of flood channels, chaur renovation, construction of storm water
drains for coastal protection;
8. Rural connectivity to provide all weather access, including culverts and roads within a village, wherever necessary;
9. Construction of Bharat Nirman Rajiv Gandhi Sewa Kendra as Knowledge Resource Centre at the Block level and as Gram Panchayat Bhawan at the Gram Panchayat level;
10. Agriculture related works, such as, NADEP composting, vermi-composting, liquid bio-manures;
11. Livestock related works, such as, poultry shelter, goat shelter, construction of pucca floor, urine tank and fodder trough for cattleshed, azolla as cattle-feed supplement;
12. Fisheries related works, such as, fisheries in seasonal water bodies on public land;
13. Works in coastal areas, such as, fish drying yards, belt vegetation;
14. Rural drinking water related works, such as, soak pits, recharge pits;
15. Rural sanitation related works, such as, individual household latrines, school toilet units,
anganwadi toilets, solid and liquid waste management;
16. Construction of anganwadi centres;
17. Construction of playfields;
18. Any other work which may be notified by the Central Government in consultation with the
State Government.

RECORD KEEPING:

Proper record maintenance is crucial to the effective implementation of any programme. There ought to be lot of clarity and simplicity in maintenance of minimum number of records to enable the cutting edge functionaries at Gram Panchayat level to spend their time effectively and gainfully in ensuring smooth implementation of the programme and not to be bogged down by the maintenance of Records and Registers alone. The Ministry has reduced the number of Registers to be maintained at the Gram Panchayat level to 7 from an average of 22 Registers that were being maintained in different states. The simplified formats of the 7 Registers are the outcome of intense engagement with the States, the representatives of Gram Rozgar Shayaks and NIC. They are designed with a view to ease the functioning of the field level personnel and reduce duplication of work without compromising with the quality of information especially those relating to entitlements of workers.
The 7 Registers are:-
1. REGISTER – I REGISTER FOR JOB CARD (APPLICATION, REGISTRATION, JOB CARD ISSUE) AND HOUSEHOLD EMPLOYMENT REPORTS
2. REGISTER – II GRAM SABHA REGISTER
3. REGISTER – III DEMAND FOR WORK, ALLOCATION OF WORK AND PAYMENT OF WAGES REGISTER
4. REGISTER – IV WORK REGISTER
5. REGISTER – V FIXED ASSET REGISTER
6. REGISTER – VI COMPLAINT REGISTER
7. REGISTER – VII MATERIAL REGISTER

MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM (MIS):

The Central Government has developed a work flow based, web enabled application (known as NREGASoft) which is hosted at the portal accessible as http://www.nrega.nic.in. NREGASoft provides for recording of all transaction details of different processes in implementation of MGNREGA and putting the same in public domain. The advantages of managing implementation of MGNREGA through NREGASoft are:
i) It enables capturing data in real-time (or near real time) from the field which helps in quick and easy analysis (which is also almost in real time). Based on the analysis, the system triggers alerts which provide opportunities to implementing and supervising authorities for timely corrective action.
ii) With a number of checks provided in NREGAsoft, it becomes easier to comply with many of the conditions stipulated e.g. the system ensures that the cap of 100 days on the number of days a household can be given employment in a year, is not breached inadvertantly.
iii) By putting transaction data in public domain, concurrent social audit is enabled. This also helps in meeting the norms of proactive disclosure.
iv) The paper work, time and effort involved in preparing reports required for a process intensive
programme such as MGNREGA, aggregation of data originating at different levels etc. is substantially reduced.
v) It facilitates smooth and seamless exchange of information with external agencies such as
banks and post offices that have a critical role in the implementation of MGNREGA.

The portal (http://nrega.nic.in) provides a single point access to the following stake holders:
i) Citizens
ii) Gram Panchayats, Block Panchayats, Zilla Panchayats
iii) Workers
iv) Implementing agencies other then PRIs
v) District/ Block Admin.
vi) Public Data Portal
vii) States
viii) Post Office
ix) E-Saksham
x) Post Offices
xi) Geo-MGNREGA
xii) Convergence.
xiii) Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India.
xiv) Social Audit Agencies
xv) KIOSK
xvi) Co-operative
xvii) CSO
xviii) Guidelines
xix) DMU Report
xx) Circular
xxi) Aadhaar Camps Calender Report
xxii) Bank
xxiii) Engineers etc.

ELECTRONIC FUND MANGEMENT SYSTEM (E-FMS):
Provides a platform for making e-payments to workers, staff and vendors (wages, material and administrative expenses) using the payment network of financial Institution (e.g. NEFT/ RTGS/ ECS/ Sanchay Post), thus addressing the issue of delay in payments to a larger extent and making the MIS real time transaction based.

DIRECT BENEFIT TRANSFER (DBT) AND THE AADHAAR PLATFORM:
Under Mahatma Gandhi NREGA Direct Benefit Transfer, all payments to the workers are to be credited into the accounts of the workers in the Bank/ Post Offices, unless exempted by the Ministry in special circumstances. The credit may either happen using the banks/ Post office account details or using the Aadhaar number of the beneficiary with which the account may be linked.

For more information, follow the link http://www.nrega.nic.in