The government?s move to converge its flagship National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) with other social sector programmes from agriculture, environment and water resources ministries would pull in financial and human resources aiming at greater impact and expansion of outreach.
In the first stage, a total of 115 pilot districts across 22 districts identified by the government for such convergence efforts. ?Convergence would bring in synergy between various government programmes in term of their planning, process and implementation,? an official source told FE.
While NREGA focuses on mostly taking up water conservation works including digging of pond, renovation of traditional water bodies, ministry of water resources and department of land resources also take up similar works relating to water management.
As more than 50% of NREGA works relate to water conservation, the possibilities of convergence between NREGA and watershed development programmes other ministries will optimise the sustainability of assets created under the programme and help in expanding outreach.
?Maintenance of large watershed structures built through water resources ministry grant could be taken up under NREGA,? the official from rural development ministry said.
As around 8% of NREGA works relate to drought proofing, it could supplement the works taken up by Ministry of Environment and Forests under the afforestation as envisaged in the National Forest Policy, 1988.
?This cannot be accomplished by environment ministry alone due to the enormity of the task,? the official said.
Similarly the rural development ministry has signed MOUs with Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) for ensuring proper planning of NREGA works.
?Appropriate technology solutions have been mapped by ICAR to provide a rational database for preparing NREGA plans, and its technical norms and designs, so that the choice of works is guided not just by the expediency of immediate employment provisioning but also by the logic of sustainable natural resource development,? the MOU said.
NREGA which has provided employment opportunities to more than 4.47 crore households last fiscal, the budget announced an allocation of Rs.39,100 crore for current fiscal which marks an increase of 144% over 2008-09 Budget Estimates. NREGA was launched initially in 200 districts in February 2006 and later extended to rest of the country from last fiscal. The government has already spend more than Rs 40,000 crore under NREGA.