Introduction:

Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) is a recently launched cash transfer scheme. To allay some misgivings of the agrarian distress, the vulnerable landholding farmer families, having cultivable land up to 2 hectares, will be provided direct income support at the rate of ? 6,000 per year.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) aims at enhancing the livelihood security of people in rural areas by guaranteeing hundred days of wage-employment in a financial year to a rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.

Farmers’ distress needs urgent attention but one need to analyse if the PM-KISAN is a reasonable solution.

Body:

Comparison between PM-KISAN and MGNREGA:

• Income potential:
  • MGNREGA earnings for a household is more than a year’s income support through PM-KISAN
  • For example, if two members of a household in Jharkhand work under MGNREGA (picture) for 30 days, they would earn ?10,080 and a household of two in Haryana would earn ?16,860 in 30 days.
• Universal vs targeted:
  • PM-KISAN is a targeted cash transfer programme and MGNREGA is a universal programme.
  • There is also substantial evidence to demonstrate that universal schemes are less prone to corruption than targeted schemes.
  • In targeted programmes, it is very common to have errors of exclusion, i.e., genuine beneficiaries get left out.
  • Such errors go unrecorded and people continue to be left out.
• Intended beneficiaries:
  • Any rural household willing to do manual work is eligible under the MGNREGA.
  • According to the 2011 Socio-Economic and Caste Census, around 40% of rural households are landless and depend on manual labour.
  • The landless can earn through the MGNREGA but are not eligible for the PM-KISAN scheme.
  • Notwithstanding the meagre amount, the PM-KISAN might be pitting the landless against a small farmer.
• Impact on various sections:
  • It is unclear how tenant farmers, those without titles, and women farmers would be within the ambit of the PM-KISAN scheme.
  • MGNREGA ensures women empowerment by providing equal wages and reservation for women.
  • It also aims at reducing rural- urban migration and creation and maintenance of rural assets and environmental protection.
• Bureaucratic efficiency:
  • Repeated changes in processes result in a hurried bureaucratic reorientation on the ground, and much chaos among workers and field functionaries alike.
  • Field functionaries are pushed to meet stiff targets.
  • Being short-staffed and inadequately trained, results in many technical and unforeseen errors.

Issues with MGNREGA:

• Aadhar has been hastily implemented for the MGNREGA. Several MGNREGA payments have been rejected, diverted, or frozen as a consequence.
• The delay in the payment of wages which is captured in the system is intentionally suppressed to avoid paying delay compensation.
• There are numerous cases of MGNREGS payments getting diverted to Airtel wallets and ICICI bank accounts.
• In a recently concluded survey on common service centres in Jharkhand for Aadhar-based payments, it was found that 42% of the biometric authentications failed in the first attempt, compelling them to come later.
• the MGNREGA wage rates in 18 States have been kept lower than the States’ minimum agricultural wage rates.
• While ?75,000 crore has been earmarked for PM-KISAN, the MGNREGA continues to be pushed to a severe crisis.

Concerns with PM-KISAN:

• The success of the PM-KISAN is contingent on there being reliable digital land records and reliable rural banking infrastructure, which are both are questionable.
• Lack of universality of financial inclusion is another impediment in rural areas.
• According to National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development’s (Nabard) All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey (Nafis) small and marginal farmers earned Rs 79,802-1,19,878 in 2015-16. This means that the Rs 6,000 annual direct income transfer under PM-KISAN would be only about 5-8% of their existing income levels.
• The Agrarian crisis is not just of low incomes in agriculture. The genesis of the current crisis lies in the faulty and ad hoc export-import policy, lack of infrastructure and cartelisation and collusion in agricultural markets, which have prevented farmers from realizing the market prices for agricultural produce.
• By taking away precious fiscal resources, it makes the farmer more vulnerable to both market as well as non-market induced risks.

Way Forward:

• The MGNREGA is neither an income support programme nor just an asset creation programme but it has the principles of combination of both to strengthen the rural economy as well as democracy.
• MGNREGA works have demonstrably strong multiplier effects are yet another reason to improve its implementation.
• It is a labour programme meant to strengthen participatory democracy through community works. It is a legislative mechanism to strengthen the constitutional principle of the right to life.
• The Supreme Court in the Swaraj Abhiyan vs. Union of India case stated that said that the delay caused in stage-2 was not taken into account for the purpose of payment of compensation.
• Incorporation of ICT infrastructure at grassroots level, so that the data is available in public leading to better transparency and accountability.
• Social audits, mandated by law under MGNREGA, should be strengthened to reduce the data suppression and under-representation of job demand.

Conclusion:

It is in some of these contexts that strengthening an existing universal programme such as the MGNREGA would have been a prudent move instead of introducing a hasty targeted cash transfer programme. At a time of such acute distress, there is a need to the Central government to improve the existing universal infrastructure of the MGNREGA before plunging into a programme pretending to augment farmers’ income.