India needs greater decentralisation, which should involve giving more powers to panchayats and local bodies along with increased use of technology in the agricultural sector to improve rural wages, said S Mahendra Dev, member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM), on Friday.
Speaking at the Rohini Nayyar Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Rural Development, Dev said that in many states across the country there is resistance to devolving powers to local councils. The levels of decentralisation in China and the US are much higher, he said.
Recalling Nayyar’s contribution in designing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme, Dev said that implementation of the scheme through panchayats not only helped lift wages but also build trust in grassroots democracy.
“She [Nayyar] was responsible for designing MGNREGA, launched in 2006. At that time, we had listed the direct and indirect benefits of MGNREGA. The direct benefits are well known — the creation of wage employment, which helps lift incomes, and asset creation. But there are many indirect benefits. The most important benefit for workers was self-respect because earlier they were dependent on landlords for employment. So their bargaining power has increased,” Dev said.
“Another positive impact was the improvement in agricultural wages and women’s empowerment, as almost 50 per cent of workers are women. It also reduced distress migration. And since it was implemented through panchayats, grassroots democracy also improved,” he added.
The Rohini Nayyar Prize has been instituted by the family of the late Rohini Nayyar, an eminent scholar-administrator who spent much of her professional life working on issues related to rural development in India. This year’s Prize was awarded to Pune-based social entrepreneur Vidhya Parshuramkar.
