Cash flow for NREGA ebbs in Bengal as the state fails to launch e-governance platforms for the management information system that enables operations of the scheme. With data not being computerised to create a demand for allocation of funds, the Centre goes slow in releasing money. However, with TCS now in the loop, things might just start improving in the state

Digsui Hoara, a village in Hooghly district 50 km from Kolkata, got a facelift in the last two years after aggressively implementing projects under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Most of the village roads were metalled and bylanes slapped with concrete. Ponds and other larger water bodies were paved as a measure to conserve traditional water bodies, and the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) canal running across the village dredged to ensure proper flow of water. Embankments were built along the canal to control flood during the rainy season and low land utilised to make social forestry and orchards. Most important, a majority of BPL families in the village were provided jobs.

All this happened when West Bengal as a whole had a very poor success rate in implementing NREGA. But just when the state government claims to have achieved a turnaround in implementing the scheme, funds have stopped reaching Digsui Hoara and other panchayats.

While the Centre has so far released R1,054 crore this fiscal (for the period up to September 2012) on the basis of the state?s demand for 61,000 panchayats in West Bengal, it has not made any allocation for the entire year because of the uncertainty surrounding the man days the state would be able to achieve, which forms the basis of the central release.

When Bengal performed at its worst, it generated an average 14 days of work against a national average of 25 days in 2011-12, which when converted to man days worked out to 1,463.22 lakh man days. The targeted man days for the year were 1,900 lakh. This year the target has been brought down by 646.46 lakh man days and the empowered committee of the rural development ministry will review the progress in October, and find out whether the state would be able to achieve the target.

Till May this year, the state had targeted to create 350.10 lakh man days. But whether the 33 days of work generated, as said by chief minister Mamata Banerjee, is working out to be these many man days (within May) taking into account all the 61,000 panchayats, is yet to be determined, says a rural development ministry official in charge of compiling data.

Banerjee, in a recent meeting at Junglemahal, had said West Bengal has surpassed the present national average and has created 33 days of work against the national average of 31 days. But the ground reality throws up a different picture.

The panchayats that performed last year have stopped implementing NREGA projects. A state panchayat department official told FE that the panchayats under the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) performed excellently last year and generated 23 days of employment. Despite that, the state registered only 14 days of employment generation, reflecting the dismal performance of panchayats in other districts last year. Digsui Hoara panchayat was marked as one of the best functioning panchayats in 2011-12, but this year it has also fallen behind.

State panchayat minister Subrata Mukherjee says even as the government was trying to make the best use of the MGNREGA, many ?CPM-controlled gram panchayats in Murshidabad, Nadia, North 24 Parganas and Howrah districts were not functioning?. ?We have kept a target of achieving 50 days of work this year (2012-2013) and this could fetch us R4,000 crore from the Centre, but what if panchayats are not cooperating?? he says.

But Gautam Neogi, who runs a Trinamool Congress-led panchayat, points at compliance issues that are halting the flow of funds. He says NREGA is no more limited to creating job opportunities and employing people, but has been extended to attaining various levels of competence through implementing e-governance.

Funds will now come on the basis of successful implementation of e-governance and that is where the majority of the panchayats are failing,? he says.

A state panchayat department official says the Centre has laid down certain conditions for West Bengal as part of achieving the first level of competence, which include mapping of assets created under NREGA and uploading it to the website, preparing statements of asset quality, estimating life time of each work undertaken and gathering data on closure, completion, partial completion and abandonment of projects.

The state has also been asked to roll out electronic financial management system (e-FMS) in all the districts and start electronic muster and measurement system (e-MMS) in select districts on a pilot basis. But there is hardly any progress on this front, as 90% of the panchayats have failed in implementing the management information system (MIS), which forms the basis of rolling out the other two e-platforms.

Neogi says MIS was basically uploading real time financial and non-financial data and the state would release funds to the panchayats after assessing this data. ?Even if I have the software installed for processing the data, there is no manpower to execute it,? he says, adding that his panchayat would need at least 25 people to process the real time data, but the government is not sanctioning a single post or allowing contractual workers to undertake the task.

So the Digsui Hoara panchayat, which executed R6.4 crore worth of NREGA projects last year, has not implemented any NREGA projects this year because of a lack of funds. An official in the panchayat department admits that this has been the case with 80% of the panchayats in the state.

However, Mukherjee claims that the panchayats of Junglemahal are performing well and are driving the growth in the number of working days. But problems persist here too. Antara Bhattacharya, sabhadhipati of West Midnapore district zila parishad, under which the panchayats of Junglemahal fall, admits that funds are flowing into some panchayats since it has been able to establish a system of e-governance, but there are many people whose wages have been pending for the past three months.

As per ministry data, 36% of the total wages supposed to be paid so far are pending and there is no information from the state government as to how much of the R1,054 crore has been utilised. For the record, West Bengal?s utilisation rate has been very low in 2011-12, 50% against neighbouring Bihar?s 86% and of the total R3,713 crore allocated, R2,579 crore has been released. The state could spend only R1,290 crore of the released amount. This happened when the Centre did not impose any financial monitoring system. But with the Centre trying to push systems for tracking flow of funds, the state is bound to falter further.

West Bengal also has the highest difference between the number of job card holders and the actual people working. While the number of job card holders surpasses 2.23 crore, the actual number of people working have been a little over 50.23 lakh. The number of bank and post office accounts through which the NREGA wages are paid are even lower?a little over 26.76 lakh. These are the anomalies that show the leakages in the system.

Pointing at his own panchayat, Neogi says even if it has 5,500 job card holders, the actual number of people taking up work has not exceeded 3,500. ?Now even if I have given all the 3,500 people 95 days of work, the average would come down because all the 5,500 job card holders would be taken into account while calculating the number of jobs created,? Neogi explains.

Mukherjee says the state plans to issue biometric cards to all job card holders in the state to ensure that the right person benefits. He adds that the state has already issued tenders for making biometric cards and NREGA workers would get it by the end of the year.

But Friday?s development of the state government signing on Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to provide end-to-end services in MGNREGA at a cost of R103 crore so that e-governance applications are streamlined in implementing the Centre?s flagship programme has come as a major positive. Says Tanmoy Chakraborty, TCS vice-president and global head for government industry solutions, ?The TCS-MGNREGA solution framework will enable backward and forward integration of the entire processes, including enrollment, authentication of persons, secure wage disbursement, as well as work site attendance management.? ?