Health Sector In India- Holistic Study Part 3

Electricity – DDUGJY

Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (Ministry of Power)

• Provide a continuous power supply to rural India
• GARV-II app to provide real-time data of all six lakh villages of the country
• Village-wise works sanctioned under Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) has been mapped to scrutinize the progress of work
• Feeder separation to ensure sufficient power to farmers for irrigation and regular supply to other consumers. It is also a pre-requisite for introducing water pricing.

PURA (Providing Urban Amenities to Rural Areas) – MoRD

Aims to provide amenities similar to urban areas by four-thronged process of rural development.

Infrastructural/Physical Development – Increasing road connectivity to rural areas

Knowledge Connectivity- Setting up Educational institutions

Communication Accessibility- Telecom and other networks

Economic Enhancement- Providing livelihood opportunities on the background of other 3 pillars.

Employment opportunities are provided to villages under the MNREGA scheme providing 100 days of assured employment.

Increased focus given to sanitation, provision of clean drinking water on re-launch of the scheme compared to knowledge connectivity.

Technical Assistance is provided by ASEAN Bank of Development.

Launched as a PPP model with private sector organizations coordinating with Gram Panchayats implementing developmental plans of MoRD plans of Central and State governments.

S.P Mukherjee Rurban Mission

The mission recognizes that villages are not stand alone settlements but clusters of them that are proximate providing opportunities to derive geographical and demographic advantages. These clusters once developed can be classified as ‘Rurban’ and the mission aims to provide them with physical, social and economic infrastructural facilities.

Vision: Development of clusters of villages with focus on inclusivity and equity and provision of basic facilities essentially considered urban in nature, thus creating a cluster of smart Rurban villages

Objective: Local Economic Development, Enhance basic services and create well planned Rurban clusters

Components:

1. Digital Connectivity – Bridging the digital divide with rural areas by leveraging Digital India Mission. Enhances online access to government services aiming to digitally empower citizens. Digital literacy is a key part of capacity building and skill development initiatives hence enabling livelihood generation reducing unemployment in rurban clusters – (DDUAY can be leveraged for the same)
2. Skill Development
3. Integrated Planned Villages – Creating a smart culture of villages , inter-village road connectivity, village streets and drains, Fully equipped mobile health unit (NRHM), Sanitation, Water supply, Solid and Liquid Waste Management
4. Traditional Knowledge – Upgrading school/ higher education facilities

Desired outcomes of the Mission

• Local economic development generating livelihoods for rural poor hence reducing unemployment and poverty by provision of economic activities, developing skills and local entrepreneurship providing infrastructural facilities
• Attracting investment in rural areas and spreading development in the region
• Bridging divide between rural and urban areas – economic, technological and those related to facilities or services

Structure of Implementation – The Polity Takeaway of Rurban Mission

State governments would identify clusters geographically contiguous with gram panchayats in accordance with the framework of implementation as directed by MoRD. Hence Rurban mission is a continuation of the government’s policy of encouraging the bottom-up approach.

Funding is through various other schemes integrated into the cluster and additional 30% Critical Gap Funding as Central share to enable development of such Rurban clusters – Cooperative Federalism

States would prepare detailed Integrated Cluster Action Plans – Detailing strategy for the cluster, desired outcomes for the cluster under the mission and resource convergence under various schemes and CGF required for the cluster

Participative Model of Development

In this mode of development, citizens are provided opportunities to empower themselves and hence ride over poverty. Hence beneficiaries are active participants in this model of development and it is a more sustainable solution as it involves creation of livelihoods enabling citizens to be self-reliant

MGNREGA – Ministry of Rural Development

Under this programme, the government guarantees 100 days of assured employment to beneficiaries in rural areas (1 member of household). In case of regions affected by natural disasters, days of employment shall stretch to 150 days.

Even in cases where the government is not able to provide the guaranteed work hours, the beneficiaries shall earn wages of 100 days of employment.

Objectives of MGNREGA

• Livelihood Creation: Providing livelihoods to rural poor enabling them to come out of poverty
• Rural Infrastructure Development: Build up rural infrastructure with active participation of villagers
• Demand-driven rural development: The planning and implementation of the MGNREGS is vested with the Panchayats. This ensures that the demand of the population evokes development rather than a top-down approach followed in earlier CDPs.
• Bottom-up Approach with greater accountability in grass-root governance

Constitutional Background

Article 38 – Promote the welfare of people securing economic (social, political) justice

Article 39 (A) – All citizens men and women shall have adequate means of livelihood

Article 41- State shall within the limits of its economic capacity and development, make effective provision for securing the right to work, to education and public assistance.

Positive Outcomes of MGNREGA

• Provision of livelihoods enabling several villagers to be alleviated from poverty increasing their purchasing power
• Rural infrastructure development with particularly goods results seen in ancillary agrarian infrastructure of canals and reservoirs
• Enabled government to implement several other programmes linked with rural development by leveraging available demographic dividend in a win-win situation for both stakeholders
• Women empowerment: MGNREGA witnessed large scale participation of women hence empowering them economically enabling them to find voice within their households
• Tackled the issue of seasonal unemployment and disguised unemployment in agriculture by diversifying employability opportunities enabling better productivity
• Increased bargaining power of agricultural labourers enabling them to thrive overexploitation of landlords
• MGNREGS helped arrest rural to urban migration and some studies point to a reverse migration to rural areas in search of work
• Social Audit component empowering citizens and enforcing accountability on governance systems

Critical Analysis of MGNREGA

• Inadequate Productivity: MGNREGA has not witnessed the building of productive assets in proportion to the employment opportunities it generates and the wages the government commits. Hence the very objective of introducing a participative form of development has been compromised
• Lack of focus on skill development: Although MGNREGA witnessed large participation of rural workforce, the characteristics of the population and the work assigned was largely non-skilled or semi-skilled works generating a pool of low skilled workforce. Hence there was a lack of focus on skill development and employability in skilled jobs.
• Wages not disbursed timely have been a violation of socio-economic justice that a welfare state stands for which is also a part of the basic structure of the constitution.
• State-wise wage disparity
• Insufficient wages: Many states have fixed wages that are below minimum wages stipulated by legislations effectively violating Article 23 of the constitution which eliminates forced labour and the spirit of living wage guaranteed under Article 43(DPSP).
  • The Mahendra Dev committee unequivocally stated that ‘the baseline for all MGNREGA workers wage shall be fixed at minimum wage for agricultural labourers fixed by the state under the Minimum wages Act
• Beneficiary Identification: Gram panchayats tasked with beneficiary identification have suffered from issues of nepotism, corruption and favouritism which has led to exclusion errors
• Reduced available employment for agriculture: The increased wages and alternate avenues provided by NREGS has increased the cost of obtaining labour for farmers which have affected their profitability

Recommendations for Improving MGNREGA

• Increasing Productivity Leveraging Technology: Geo-Tagging and leveraging satellite-based technology to identify prospective areas of development, monitoring and ensure its fulfilment
• Diversify to avoid Exclusion: Workforce must be chosen from different sections of society to avoid exclusion errors
• Integration with other rural development programmes to achieve greater convergence of outcomes. Eg: PMGSY can be integrated with MGNREGS
• Introduce a skill development component and enhance aptitude of citizens towards skilled jobs —à PROJECT LIFE
• DBT to increase transparency and ensure timely disbursement of wages
• Including labour on Private farmland in subset of activities: Recognizing farm labour under NREGS and providing subsidy on labourer’s wages to farmers can ensure that rural agriculture is not hit by reduced availability of labour

Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Antyodaya Yojana – NRLM – MoRD

Aided in part by investment from the world bank, the mission aims to create efficient and effective institutional platforms for rural poor enabling them to increase household income through sustainable livelihood enhancements and improved access to financial services.

Features of DDUAY

• Universal Social Mobilization of Poor: Formation of SHGs to mobilize poor population into groups and leverage their strength as a group to attain means of livelihood. Special efforts are made to ensure participation of vulnerable and marginalized households – women-headed households, SC/ST , disabled, landless, migrant labourers
• Financial Inclusion: By grouping into SHGs, it eases the difficulty in receiving micro credit from rural credit institutions making rural poor preferred clients of the banking system. NRLM facilitates universal access to cost-effective financial services to the poor including financial literacy, bank accounts, credit, insurance, remittance, pension and counselling on financial services.
• Social Capital: Brings like-minded people together and provides opportunities to alleviate participants from poverty leveraging their collective strength
• Capacity Building: Poor are provided with requisite skills for managing their institutions, linking up with markets, managing existing livelihoods, enhancing credit absorption capability and creditworthiness. ICT is used as an important tool in knowledge dissemination for more effective capacity building
• Facilitating Market Linkages: SHGs enable to find efficient linkages to market in terms of finished goods distribution (forward linkage) as well as raw material procurement (backward linkage). Hence it enables handicraft and traditional village industries to thrive driven by demand

Challenges of DDUAY

• Market linkages are not sufficient affecting profitability of MSMEs under rural entrepreneurs backed by DDUAY
• Lack of Aptitude towards skill development and skilled jobs
• Cultural impediments of patriarchy and caste affecting participation of women and occupational mobility of historically disadvantaged sections
• Political Interventions affecting the smooth functioning of DDUAY

Regional Disparity with South India mainly gaining employability as opposed to the North