NREGA powers AP farmers with IT
By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 22 September 2009, 15:04 IST   |    4 Comments
Printer Print Email Email
NREGA powers AP farmers with IT
Bangalore: The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has brought transparency and dignity for about 11 million job seekers in Andhra Pradesh (AP), reports the Economic Times. Sanjeeva, a 26 year old landless peasant in Allawada village near Hyderabad, is among those who have never seen a computer. But he has been realizing the benefits of using a software solution. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) is being blamed for corrupt execution and NREGA is also criticized for being inefficient. However, CAG has praised the NREGA implementation in Andhra Pradesh because the state has been successful in leveraging IT for building a transparent and accountable system. With almost 40,000 crore allocated towards NREGA this year, an IT led execution at the grassroots level could go a long way in ensuring success. "Earlier, landlords and contractors used to pay around 40-50 every day, and even that payment was done as an obligation to us. Now, I understand that on using the computer, we are given wage slips and can demand any information anytime from the village officials, this thing has changed our lives," said Sanjeeva. By enrolling to a village panchayat, a job seeker like Sanjeeva gets allocation and monitoring of assigned work, leading to final wage payment as everything is registered and tracked using a software solution developed by the country's biggest software exporter Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in collaboration with AP government officials. Bureaucrats and government officials who are involved with the project concede that the software solution has helped them nail the issues of corruption and lack of transparency very effectively. Also, an intelligent software platform also helps the officials work towards improving the average wage rates. Since AP is able to track the progress of work through an automated system, the workers are paid based on the amount of work they complete, rather than the number of hours they put in. "We can now look at average wage rates across different types of works, and apply the knowledge to improve wage rates in pockets where it's not healthy," said A Murali, Director, NREGS-AP. The system has helped to improve the wages from 30-40 to 80 in the Telangana district by identifying relevant projects and assigning them accordingly. The system allows users such as Murali and other officials to sift through entire data, including the number of job cards issued across 22 districts and almost 21,857 village mandals and identify the loopholes for addressing inefficiencies.

siliconindia