IIYW was also involved in training people to conduct NREGS social audits.

While the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) clearly recognises social audits, along with physical and financial audits, as an important measure in ensuring transparency and effectiveness in the Act’s implementation, the actual task of carrying out a social audit in every village in the country where the scheme is being implemented is a huge task.

To meet this challenge, IIYW has developed a training module for resource persons carrying out social audits, which is clear and easy to follow.

Till September 2007, 10 resource people from IIYW, along with resource people from 15 other NGOs, were trained according to this module.

The effectiveness of the training was tested on the ground when the IIYW’s 10 trained resource people carried out NREGS social audits in 40 gram panchayats in Chamorshi tehsil of Gadchiroli district, in June 2007.

IIYW, which was involved in the PACS Programme’s NREGS Week, was invited by district collector Niranjan Kumar Sudhanshu to help design the entire social audit process.

The organisation shortlisted NGOs for the training of resource people, carried out social audits, and analysed the results.

Selected resource persons were trained in a two-day workshop, during which they were made aware of all aspects of the law.

Says Shrihari Govindaji Lathare, one of the resource people trained at the workshop: “The most important thing we were taught is about the various namunas (forms) to be filled in at various stages during the NREGS implementation process. Of these, the most important are Form 1, which is the registration form, Form 3 for job cards, Form 4 to demand work, Form 5, which is the crucial receipt of demand for work, Form 7 that is related to the work order, Form 15 that pertains to the muster roll, and Form 16 that pertains to the registration of a newly-married woman as a member of her husband’s family. We were trained not only in the nature of the forms but also in the finer points of who is entitled to fill which form, and when.”

According to Lathare, a clear understanding of the paperwork involved in the implementation process is important. “For example, in many villages, officials told us that people had not filled in Form 4, demanding work, which, in effect, absolves the administration of making work available. Due to our training, we were able to detect that the forms had not been filled in because of deliberate misinformation spread by village officials that the forms were to be filled in only when work was available.”

Apart from the paperwork, a thorough understanding of other formalities involved in implementation of the NREGA was also part of the training module. According to Raju Meshram, one of the trainees: “The entire Act was read out to us, clause-by-clause, and the fine points explained in detail. We were also taught to review the process of work allotment and approval. For instance, we were taught to ask whether a village vigilance committee had been constituted. How much work had been approved in the village, and if work had not been approved, what was hindering it? We were also instructed to check the muster rolls for irregularities and register complaints immediately.”

“Filling up questionnaires is good as far as it goes,” says another enthusiastic resource person Mukteshwar Munghate. “But every official process is prone to loopholes. At the training, what was repeatedly stressed was that we must ask questions, get involved with the villagers at an informal level and encourage them to talk. As it turns out, I stumbled upon a very crucial piece of information that had not been covered in the audit purely by chance -- that during the entire period from their recruitment in January 2007, gram rozgar sewaks, the village-level officials responsible for implementation of the NREGA, had not been paid their salaries.”

An important feature of the social audit designed by IIYW was the reading out of muster rolls publicly in villages. Says IIYW chief functionary Manohar Hepat: “We insisted on this as we felt it would increase people’s participation in the process, and they would get acquainted with the vital muster rolls.”

Outreach was also an important part of the training. Says trainee Vishakha Katwale: “One of the tasks we were entrusted with was that of ensuring that the majority of villagers were present at the social audit. As a rule, in every village where we conducted a social audit, we had provided prior information to the panchayat. However, in many villages we found that people were not present at the time of the audit. When this happened, we made it a point to go around the village and inform the villagers before carrying out the audit.”

Training gram rozgar sewaks

IIYW has also developed training modules for gram rozgar sewaks. This process materialised from the social audit process itself. “During the initial days of the social audit we found that the gram rozgar sewaks in the villages had not been trained,” says Hepat. “When we reported this fact to the collector, he immediately asked us to select 10 NGOs to impart the training, and design a module for the same.”

It was decided to include not just the gram rozgar sewak but also vigilance committee members and some panchayat members from every village in the training. “We decided on a total of 10 people from each village,” says Hepat.

The one-day training module comprises five subjects, one of which is understanding the differences between the Maharashtra government’s Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) and the central government’s NREGS, and the legal standing of the two legislations.

“The point we tried to get across is that despite the fact that the NREGA is in place, and 100 days of work is guaranteed under it, the EGS is still there and villagers can still claim work under the latter for the remaining 265 days of the year,” explains Hepat.

From September 1, 2007, IIYW started a second training module, in clusters of 10 villages, covering 100 people at a time. Resource persons included government officials like the block development officer (BDO), tehsildar, NREGS assistant programme officer ( APO) and staff of the NGO conducting the training. In all, IIYW was entrusted with carrying out the training in 110 villages in Chamorshi tehsil.

According to Hepat, this training is likely to go a long way in ensuring better implementation of the NREGA in 2008.

NREGS social audit

The IIYW NREGS social audit in 40 gram panchayats was carried out between June 1 and June 25, 2007.

The audit revealed large-scale violations of legal provisions. Crucial gaps were also found in the implementation process.

The chief findings of the audit were:

• NREGS work was not started in 35 out of the 40 gram panchayats until the onset of the monsoons, when the villagers were busy with agriculture work.
• No unemployment allowance was paid to those who were not given work. Despite this issue being brought to the notice of the collector, no remedial measures were taken.
• Village-level officials and people’s representatives had provided people with erroneous information to the effect that work could be demanded only after NREGS projects had been sanctioned in the village. As a result, many people did not apply for work at all.
• Village vigilance committees had been constituted arbitrarily by gram sewaks and panchayat members. People who were on the committees were often unaware that they were.
• In all villages, gram rozgar sewaks and vigilance committee members had not received any training.
• Only 30% of people who had filled in demand notes for work had been issued receipts.
• There was little clarity regarding the nature of remuneration to be paid to gram rozgar sewaks. Since the time they were recruited, on January 26, 2007, till the time of the audit, the gram rozgar sewaks had not been paid anything.
• During the audits, village officials and panchayat members were not cooperative; many were not even present at meetings.
• On the positive side, no irregularities were found in the muster rolls of the five panchayats where work was carried out under the NREGS.

Registration and work demand status

On average, 90% of the eligible population in the 40 villages had registered for job cards, but the picture in some villages was different. According to Shrihari Latahare, one of the resource persons conducting the audit: “In some villages, as much as 30% of the eligible population had not been registered.”

The situation on the filling of Form 4, which pertains to demand for work, was more dismal. Bhendala village is a case in point. In this village, the panchayat had not issued Form 4 to people on the pretext that it did not have any forms. It was only after Shramik Elgar, an unorganised sector labour union working in the area, provided forms to the people that they were able to fill them up and get work.

The situation in Kunghada Raitwari, one of the villages covered by the audit, was typical. Of the 1,600 families in the village, 1,372 families had job cards, but only 118 families had filled in demand notes. When it came to actually getting work, just 66 families got 12 days of work during the entire season.

When questioned closely about these facts, Vijay Pithale, gram panchayat secretary, admitted that the gram panchayat machinery had been negligent in publicising relevant information about the NREGS.

In Haladwahi village, no paperwork had been done at all. “People have no information about the NREGA, no forms have been filled, and no one has been registered,” says resource person Raju Meshram.

Likewise, in the case of receipts for demand notes, the standard answer given by gram panchayats and gram sewaks was that they did not have the relevant Form 5. It was only after the audit team threatened to take the issue up with the collector that receipts began to be issued.

Misinformation had a spiralling effect. As Form 4 had not being filled up, work orders were not made out at all in 35 panchayats. People were also unable to claim unemployment allowance.

Sanctioning of work

As mentioned earlier, in 35 out of 40 panchayats, work under the NREGS did not start until the onset of the monsoons. The audit team was given various reasons for this.

In a majority of villages, gram panchayat members and gram sewaks told the audit team that work was not begun because the sanctioning authorities had not finished the necessary paperwork before the onset of the monsoons. In Mahal Amgaon village, people told the audit team that the gram sewak had followed the requisite procedures, but that the panchayat samiti had failed to sanction works.

In Kunghada Raitwari, the gram sabha approved work on a road from the village to the cremation ground. But the plan had to be changed as it showed the road going through some private land. The tehsildar was asked to come up with a new work plan, which did not arrive until the onset of the rains.

Even in Chamorshi gram panchayat, where the greatest amount of NREGS work in the tehsil has been carried out, the work of de-silting three irrigation tanks and building a road could not be undertaken because technical clearance arrived only in June.

“We will now undertake the road work after the crop season,” said sarpanch Chaya Kohle. “But the tank work has been delayed by a full year.”

Fifty per cent of work to be carried out under the NREGS has to be sanctioned by gram panchayats, but in most villages even this had not been sanctioned. When audit teams asked about this, they were told that the engineers in charge of preparing work estimates were demanding bribes (resource persons say the authenticity of these claims could not be ascertained as it was beyond the scope of the audit).

During gram sabhas held as part of the audit process, residents of many villages told the audit teams that gram sewaks and panchayat samiti members were negligent about getting work sanctioned from higher authorities.

Getting work

Even in gram panchayats where work has begun, quite a large number of people could not join in, for two main reasons. In some places, the work site was far away from the village, while in others work was started after the onset of the rains when people did not need additional work.

For instance, there are eight villages in Haldi Mall panchayat; people from all the villages were allotted work at Haldi Mall. “Very few people were able to travel the 25 km distance to the work site, and women’s participation from these villages was nil,” says resource person Vishakha Katwale.

In Gauripur, work sanctions arrived too late -- after the monsoons had set in.

Cooperation in audit

While in most villages, people in general were enthusiastic about the social audit, gram panchayat members, gram sewaks and gram rozgar sewaks were not, in most cases, very cooperative. In many villages, sarpanchs and/or gram sewaks were absent during the gram sabha that was held for the audit.

In Bhatbidi village, the sarpanch, deputy sarpanch, gram sewak and gram rozgar sewak stayed away from the audit meeting despite being sent repeated summons.

At Ghargaon, says Vishakha Katwale, the audit could not be conducted at all because the panchayat members and gram sewak were drunk and in an aggressive mood. “No documents were available, and the officials denied having received any communication regarding the audit. Around 400 villagers had assembled for the audit, but the panchayat members and gram sewak were so abusive that we had to leave without conducting the audit.”

Unclear status of gram rozgar sewaks

It was found during the audit that gram rozgar sewaks, who had been recruited for implementation of the NREGS at the village level, after gram sewaks refused to do the work, were unclear about the payment due to them.

According to Prabhakar Kothare, gram rozgar sewak of Kunghada Raitwari, the advertisement for the post of gram rozgar sewak had stated that they would be paid Rs 1,500 per month. However, “after recruitment we learnt that we were not to be paid monthly remuneration, but 1% of the value of the work done. Later, we heard that the collector had reduced the amount to 0.5% of the work done.”

Despite the fact that work worth Rs 1.17 lakh was done in his village till September 2007, Kothare had not received any remuneration. “I have been receiving just Rs 250 per month for conveyance from the gram panchayat,” he said.

Mukteshwar Munghate, resource person, says: “The recruitment of gram rozgar sewaks has been used by gram sewaks as an excuse to wash their hands off the NREGS. All the work was pushed onto newly-recruited employees who received no training or remuneration.”

A month after the remuneration issue was raised by the IIYW social audit, the district administration informed the CSO that payments had been released. However, the basis for the remuneration was still unclear. Asks Munghate: “What remuneration will gram rozgar sewaks receive when, in most villages, no work has been undertaken at all?”

Muster rolls in order

The only bright spot uncovered by the IIYW social audit was that the muster rolls in all five panchayats where work had been done were in order.

Hepat says: “In most villages we found that people had received anything between Rs 25 and Rs 130 per day, according to the amount of work done.”

In all five panchayats, people confirmed that there had been no irregularities in wage payments.

Although the results of the social audit carried out in 2007 were somewhat dismal, Hepat says: “We hope our training and awareness-generation efforts will improve the situation next year.”