Anyone who sticks with the matters brought up by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) elites about Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act Programme (MGNREGA) in the media will not be greatly surprised having known BJP and their ideology. But for sure, those irresponsible statements have raised few eyebrows and have triggered a lot of academic and political debates in the country. All those debates lead us to some fundamental yet crucial questions like, does the program really put the final nail in the coffin of agriculture, handicrafts and other labour intensive industries as these ideologues claim? Or all these are done to take us for a ride to protect vested interests? Or these are illogical reconstruction of some misread facts through ideological lenses? A close look into the realities might answer our questions.
Let’s have a scrutiny of the claimed negatives of MGNREGA. One of the two major criticisms is that, MGNREGA reduces the labour force available for agriculture and allied activities and makes them lazy, indolent and sluggish. It claims that after its inception, a rural labourer is not prepared to do hard work even if paid Rs 350 per day. He/She likes to settle for simple and less tiresome work even if they are paid very less. The other important criticism is that, MGNREGA indirectly makes agriculture less profitable.
Are the above criticisms valid? Is it true that labourers are really lazy or contented utility maximisers? When you speak with the labourers you will understand one thing. People love the work culture of MGNREGA than anything else. In MGNREGA, nearly all the willing members of the family get work and they work together, collectively in the same place with their kith and kin. Such a work gives them the much needed mental relief along with work and necessary money. This feature is conspicuously absent in private farm works. In private farms quality, speed and productivity are given preference over provision of mental relief or good work culture. Not to blame the individual farmers who own the land, it is the system of private ownership of production that dictates such preferences. If five people turn up to a job a day and there are requirements for only two people, the farmer picks the stronger two and sends back the remaining three. This when repeatedly done, makes the other three find any other place of work which gives them job security and hence it makes a case for MGNREGA. The fact that is to be examined here is, why the rural labourers are contented and do not go behind money as others generally do? The answer is very simple. They have not yet internalised the capitalist ethos which says “make money for the sake of making money”. It is an irony that the very capitalist landlords, who created the mental wall that stopped the rural labourers from learning and internalising the capitalist ethos, to serve their vested interests, are now shouting against the contradictions these walls are showing with the advent of MGNREGA. For thousands of years the owners of the capital have controlled the social dynamics in such a way that the labourers always remain at the bottom of the pyramid and left without any possibility of acquiring capabilities for mobility. These contended, satisfied and gratified natures of the labourers were the necessary condition for such domination and supremacy. When capitalism knocked the doors of the rural India these very capital owners made sure that the common man do not learn and master the dynamics of capitalism, which for them, if happened, would have drafted the blueprint of their demise. The fact that the owners of the capital are uniting against MGNREGA shows that it has started to quietly toll the death knell of their might and domination. Hence, the evident truth is MGNREGA is not showing contradictions on agriculture or handicrafts as few BJP leaders claim, but only against the capitalist mode of production and appropriation by which these activities are carried out. MGNREGA, hence in the strictest sense, is not threatening to extinct agriculture and its allied activities or handicrafts, but only the domination of capital in carrying out these activities. Thus, if someone says, the legitimate claim of assured 100 days of work is faulted under a specific system of production and distribution, then it is not the legitimate claim, but it is the system of production that has to be done away with. Thus if many persons who seek profit through agriculture and its allied activities feel such a commercial enterprise is no more profitable, then instead of allowing them to unite against scripting the renewed slavery of agricultural labourers and hence the progress of the nation should be encouraged to give way to modern cooperative agricultural societies. The progress of the nation should not be sacrificed for serving the interests of a few notables, in a democracy. When one model of agriculture is showing contradictions, it is nothing wrong in trying out some new innovative model of agricultural production and distribution. India shall be more benefited if a new system of agricultural production based on Public Private Partnership (PPP) emerges where profit is shared by all stake holders equitably. The success of Deng Xiaoping’s China had its roots neither in communism nor in capitalism, but in the innovative models of production and distribution which he devised for each and every sector exclusively. What the today’s power wielders who cry out loudly “make in India” should understand is, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is neither a new avatar of lord Krishna nor the dharma chakra of goddess Durga which could solve all the social evils and bring prosperity to the whole nation at once. Economic development and the resultant social development is a process which has to be carefully manoeuvred with innovative models of production and distribution which has a unique blend of all the successful elements of that historical period irrespective of ideology. The need of the hour is not ideologically driven policies but innovative ideas which could truly transform India.
