By

Baba Amte Centre for People’s Empowerment
Samaj Pragati Sahayog
July 2006

In December 2005, the Union Ministry of Rural Development requested Samaj Pragati Sahayog (SPS) to prepare a training manual for the recently passed National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). After consultations and peer reviews by eminent experts, SPS has come out with this comprehensive document filled with clear, targetted instructions, tools, sketches, tabulated information and examples as a rich guide to different stakeholders in the NREGA.

Excerpt from the book:
1The Watershed Works Manual is meant for those individuals and organisations who will be involved in planning, implementing and/or monitoring the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, (NREGA). These can be the PRI (Panchayati Raj Institutions) representatives, grass-roots NGOs or government officials engaged with this process at different levels. These people need to understand the details of NREGA. They need to be aware of the various entitlements of workers under the Act. They must know the procedures for registering workers, application for work, the roles and responsibilities of Gram Sabhas and Gram Panchayats, how to conduct social audit etc. They also should understand how works under the scheme are to be planned and executed. They must have the capacity to work out how structures built are to be costed. They need to know how to maintain accounts properly. If they want to ensure transparency and a corruption-free scheme they have to know all these details. Samaj Pragati Sahyog (SPS) plans to carry out a series of training programmes in the use of this manual. The hope is that the manual will be used by many of those who attended these programmes, to train other people in their own areas where NREGA is being implemented.

The manual is focused on earthen watershed structures, which are labour-intensive works given priority under NREGA. The manual is organised into 17 chapters. The first two chapters provide an introduction to NREGA. They outline the historic significance of the Act and also provide a brief summary of its official guidelines. The next four chapters introduce you to the concepts required for an understanding of the watershed approach through which the structures are to be built and also the concepts used in building these structures. This includes an introduction to the use of maps and also to basic techniques of surveying that help calculate levels and slopes of the land. A separate chapter is devoted to the social and institutional aspects that must inform our approach.

Chapters 7 to 14 introduce the most important watershed structures, one by one. Each chapter tells us about why these structures are built, how we decide where to locate them, how we lay them out over the watershed, how their design is arrived at, how we construct them, as also the precautions we need to observe in doing so. Chapter 15 tells us how to use a book called the Schedule of Rates in order to estimate how much each of these structures will cost. It teaches this through a series of numerical examples. Chapter 16 raises a number of questions about the way the Schedule of Rates has been formulated. We provide reasons for why these rates need to be urgently revised. We also suggest that the entire process of arriving at these rates needs to be much more location-specific, as also transparent and participatory in nature.

Finally, Chapter 17 teaches the basics of the double-entry system of accounts, through a series of typical transactions to be handled by the implementing agency. We believe that for too long have social activists merely raised questions about transparency and accountability. The most effective way of doing this is to actually show the way forward to everyone by understanding and adopting rigorous accounting practices. For this we need to understand the basics of accounting. This is what Chapter 17 attempts to teach. Annexure 1 provides a state-wise list of the districts where NREGA is being currently implemented.

For further information, please contact:
Samaj Pragati Sahayog
Bagli, District Dewas, Madhya Pradesh 455227
Telephone and Fax: 07271-275757, 275550, 275500
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