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Learn From This Opinion - News Analysis Denial or worse?
True Life Story A Redefining the role of the
Prayer That Can From accounts to accountability state
Pakistan: between a rock and
Change Your Life
Jean Drèze and Reetika Khera a hard place
www.LifesGreatestQuestion.com
From accounts to
Bank payments alone are not an adequate protection against corruption accountability
Jesus: God or in NREGA. America not the country I
Fraud? once knew
Discover the The ghost of corruption has haunted many public interventions in India, A lifetime without memory
and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is no Historian for the young
Evidence From Corrections and clarifications
exception. Bank payments of NREGA wages were recently introduced on a
Scholars About mass scale, and projected as a foolproof remedy against corruption. Dealing with Pakistan
Jesus' Claims to Recent evidence, however, suggests that the banking system itself is not Zardari’s flip-flop
be God above corruption — corrective steps are urgently needed. Not justified
www.Y-Jesus.com/God
Rush to bank payments Archives
Yesterday's Issue
Dell™ Personal The main technique of embezzlement in public employment programmes, Datewise
Laptops including NREGA, is to fudge the “muster rolls” (attendance sheets): fake
Build your Features:
names or inflated attendance figures are entered in the muster rolls, and
Magazine
Inspiron™ middlemen pocket the difference. This used to be possible, indeed very
Literary Review
Laptops Online simple, because of the cloud of secrecy that surrounded the muster rolls. Metro Plus
Now Powered by The NREGA sought to change that based on a range of safeguards, Open Page
Intel® Core™ i3 starting with the transparency of muster rolls. For instance, NREGA muster Education Plus
Dell.co.in/Home/Laptops rolls are supposed to be available at the worksite and filled there every Book Review
day in the presence of the workers, giving them an opportunity to check Business
the details at any time. Similarly, payment details from the muster rolls SciTech
are supposed to be entered in the workers’ “job cards”, enabling them to NXg
monitor these payments. Friday Review
Cinema Plus
Another factor that facilitated corrupt practices in the past was that the Young World
same person or agency was in charge of maintaining muster rolls and Property Plus
paying the wages. Since both functions were in the same hands, fudging Quest
muster rolls was both easy and profitable. The separation of these two
functions is a powerful safeguard against embezzlement. Even before
NREGA, this was the norm on drought relief programmes in Rajasthan.
There, muster rolls were prepared by Gram Panchayat functionaries with
the help of the “mate” (worksite supervisor), whereas wages were paid by
the patwari (a Panchayat level employee of the revenue department). This
makes it harder to siphon off funds by fudging muster rolls, unless the
different actors collude with each other.

The need to separate payment agencies from implementation agencies


was an important argument for the recent introduction of bank (or post
office) payments of NREGA wages. There are other good reasons for
introducing bank payments. For instance, paying wages directly into the
workers’ accounts reduces the risk of harassment by payments officials.

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The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : From accounts to accountability file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Administrator/Desktop/Navjyot...

Further, it encourages saving habits and the use of bank facilities.

However, there are also significant drawbacks with bank payments. The
Chennai-Delhi coverage of banks and post offices in rural India is still patchy, which
Airfares means that labourers have to travel some distance to collect their wages
Flight Tickets At (as opposed to getting cash in hand in their own village). In some states
Rs. 99 + Taxes. at least, bank payments have been associated with delays in the
Quality Service. disbursement of wages, as the relevant transactions work their way
Book Now & Save! through the system. There is also a danger of women being excluded, if
bank accounts are opened in the names of men only, as has happened in
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some districts.

From a long-term perspective, the payment of wages through banks is


probably a move in the right direction. However, the transition to bank
सरकार नौकर payments has been made in a very rushed and haphazard manner. And
the results have often been sobering.
अपना CV डाले और
The Deoghar social audit
आज ह apply कर !
A social audit of 17 NREGA works in five Gram Panchayats of Karon Block
www.HTJobs.in/Government_Jobs
in Deoghar District (Jhardhan), conducted on 12-16 October 2008,
unearthed some alarming facts related to bank payments. Briefly, the loot
is far from over: funds are siphoned off through manipulated bank
New Chevrolet accounts of NREGA workers, in collusion with bank staff. In Deogarh,
Captiva banks are rapidly being integrated in the system of corruption.
Choose Your Own
Turf. Drive Power Consider the case of the construction of two NREGA wells in Ranidih
Packed SUV Panchayat: one on Koka Baori’s land and the other on Paane Hembrahm’s.
Captiva.Test Ride Both were approached by the Panchayat Sevak, who offered to get a well
Today! constructed on their land. Once the well was sanctioned, a contractor took
charge (an infraction under the Act). When cheques arrived in the name of
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the beneficiaries, they were asked to collect it from the bank and hand it
over to the contractor to pay for material costs.
Mediclaim in
India As far as wage payments were concerned, it was a simple matter for the
Premiums, contractor. Two years earlier, he had kindly opened bank accounts for
features & tax many NREGA labourers (often without their knowledge), with a little help
benefits of all 16 from the rather cooperative staff of the Deoghar-Jamtara Central
health insurance Cooperative Bank. The contractor and Panchayat Sevak manufactured
cos muster rolls with wages adding up to the labour component sanctioned for
ApnaPaisa.com/Mediclaim the wells. Whenever money is transferred to the labourers’ accounts, the
trio of bank officials, contractor and Panchayat Sevak step in: they coolly
pocket the excess money after giving their due to the labourers who
actually worked. Most of the labourers we spoke to said that they had
never been to the bank, and that they were paid in cash at the worksite by
the contractor.

While other banks in the area did not have the audacity to indulge in such
open loot, their practices were not entirely above board either. In some
cases, we heard that labourers had been made to sign withdrawal slips in
bulk at the time of opening their bank accounts, to facilitate proxy
withdrawals later on. In the case of Allahabad Bank and Vananchal Bank,
bank officials said that labourers came in person to withdraw their wages,
but usually accompanied by men who “do not look like labourers”. These
men, believed to be the contractors’ cronies, stand outside the bank and
force the labourers to hand over the excess money that has been claimed
in their name. For us, this story was a nightmare come true: one year
earlier, a master (or rather mistress) contractor in Orissa had told us that
if bank payments of NREGA wage were introduced, “the contractors will
become dacoits.”

Magic bullet or shot in the foot?

How typical Deogarh’s experience is we do not know. But this experience


certainly shows that bank payments alone are not an adequate protection
against corruption. In fact, in Jharkhand’s anarchic environment (not
unique to Deogarh), they have even facilitated embezzlement in several
ways. First, while all NREGA-related documents (e.g. muster rolls, job
cards, measurement books) are supposed to be in the public domain, it is
not clear whether banks are going to accept this principle for their own
records, including the details of NREGA accounts. Meanwhile, the rush to
bank payments has led to reduced transparency by withdrawing key
documents from public scrutiny.

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The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : From accounts to accountability file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Administrator/Desktop/Navjyot...

Second, payments through banks and post offices introduce new players
into the corruption game — the staff of these institutions. It is not clear
how these officials (who are often employees of the Central government,
rather than of the State governments or Panchayati Raj Institutions) are to
be held accountable for NREGA-related matters. They tend to be more
difficult to “catch” than other functionaries such as the Panchayat Sevak or
Gram Rozgar Sevak.

Third, embezzlement of wages paid though bank accounts typically


requires the involvement or cooperation of the labourers themselves, in
one way or another. Labourers generally have a stake in blowing the
whistle against corruption, but when they become part of the nexus of
corruption, this voice is effectively silenced.

Last but not least, bank payments have led to an alarming neglect of other
transparency safeguards. For instance, muster rolls are no longer signed
by workers at the time of wage payment, since wages are paid directly
through banks. In fact, in Deogarh we found that muster rolls had been
reduced to a naked attendance sheet, without any payment details. The
only person who signs is the person who fills the muster roll in the first
place, and his or her “supervisor”, often acting in collusion. Apparently, a
similar setback is happening in Rajasthan. This is unfortunate since
Rajasthan had largely stamped out the embezzlement of NREGA wages
based on more “conventional” safeguards such as the transparency of
muster rolls.

This is not to say that the transition to bank payments should be reversed.
But this transition certainly requires great caution (including strict
monitoring of banks and post offices), and must be combined with strict
enforcement of all the transparency norms. The Central government seems
to regard bank payments as a “magic bullet” against corruption, but the
bullet is in danger of ending up in its own foot.

(The authors are associated with the G.B. Pant Social Science Institute,
Allahabad University.)

Corrections and Clarifications

The seventh paragraph of an article "From accounts to accountability"


(Op-Ed, December 6, 2008) was "A social audit of 17 NREGA works in five
Gram Panchayats of Karon Block in Deoghar District (Jhardhan), conducted
on 12-16 October 2008, unearthed some alarming facts related to bank
payments .." It should have been Deoghar District (Jharkhand).

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