Singh: For sustainable growth

New Delhi, Jan. 4: The rural employment guarantee programme, the massive social welfare project that has come to symbolise the human face the UPA government wants to show, will be launched on February 2 in 200 districts.

The scheme, which guarantees employment for 100 days a year to one member of each family in a village, will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

If the government fails to provide employment ? mostly development work ? within 15 days of application, the person will have to be paid unemployment allowance.

The government had initially planned to give employment to only families below the poverty line but the Left, the driving force behind the scheme, ensured that the programme covered all who wanted work.

Rural development minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said today that the guidelines have been finalised for the implementation of the programme in consultation with the states and experts. The minimum wage of each state will be paid to participants in the programme.

The employment guarantee bill was passed by Parliament in the monsoon session and the scheme was notified after presidential assent.

The first phase, covering 200 districts, is expected to cost the government Rs 10,000 crore during the remaining two months of the financial year.

Work will start almost immediately after the launch of the programme. The districts have been identified by the Planning Commission on the basis of their SC/ST population, wage status and productivity.

The law envisages coverage of all the 600 districts in five years. The Centre has already pledged 90 per cent of the funds required to implement the programme. The rest 10 per cent would come from the states’ coffers.

“The state will get benefits of this programme. So why should they not be a part of the process? They are the beneficiaries,” Singh said.

The minister said employment generation has been fused with sustainable infrastructure development. The rural poor would be employed for water conservation, drought proofing, building irrigation canals, renovation of traditional water bodies and land development.

From the Centre’s side, Rs 5,500 crore will come from the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana fund while Rs 4,500 crore would be routed through the food-for-work scheme.