DSE: SOCIOLOGY

OF ORGANISATIONS
HOME ASSIGNMENT
Transparent-making Documents and the Crisis of Implementation: A Rural Employment Law
and Development Bureaucracy in India

SEMESTER 4

SUBMITTED BY: SARBANI SINGH SUBMITTED TO: DR.

TWINKLE
ROLL NO.: 22/1099 SIWACH
COURSE: B.A. HONS. POLITICAL SCIENCE

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Introduction
The article, written by Nayanika Mathur, University of Edinburgh, in 2012, attempts to
examine the implementation of India’s ambitious social security legislation, the National
Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (NREGA) in Chamoli district, on the border of
Uttarakhand state. She argues that the focus on transparency through documents has made the
law difficult to implement. The overwhelming volume of paperwork has burdened the lower-
level functionaries, with the documentation becoming a major hindrance in the regular
working of the Indian state.

Description of ethnographical field

This section follows the processes through which transparency is claimed to be officially
achieved by India’s developmental machinery. For this, the author has used their doctoral
framework in India, which spans 16 months (2006-2008), when she lived for 10 months in a
small town called Gopeshwar, the administrative headquarters of Chamoli district, where the
primary ethnography is based. Post departure, the author continued to follow the operation of
NREGA in scattered sites (in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, and the cities of Dehradun
and Delhi) for another six months.

Methodological focus
She followed the daily bureaucratic practices by observing the 10:00 a.m.- 5:00 p.m. routine,
a six-days-a-week routine of government offices, and during this, she was immediately
confronted with colossal amounts of paperwork. Her interest in the documentation process of
the scheme stemmed from a review of the sarkari-zindagi (as described to her by bureaucrats)
of the NREGA: a life of paperwork. Other actors involved in this case also postulated the
difference between the state’s rendition and the actual implementation of the same (asli
zindagi), the latter of which can be seen in the accounts of the supposed beneficiaries.

The link between NREGA and RTI

The operational guidelines of NREGA talk about a commitment to transparency and
accountability. This commitment also runs into the RTI Act, of 2005.

The NREGA guidelines implore that there should be both proactive disclosure of information
and public access to key records at all levels in the implementation of the NREGA. It can also
be ensured via an innovative feature of the scheme: the concept of “social audits.”

The RTI (Government of India 2005) overturns the terms of anti-disclosure of state
information established under the Officials Secret Act of 1923. The campaign was founded
on the belief that citizens’ access to unreachable official documents would reduce corruption
and exploitation of the people. Activists such as Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey, James Scott, Aruna
Baviskar, etc, have expressed their views on the same, with Baviskar deriving from Scott’s
thesis on the “modern state as an exercise in legibility” by articulating that the Indian

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bureaucracy’s commitment to documentation is the core principle underlying the RTI. It
makes the state legible to the people.

The idea of NREGA emphasizes that documents play a crucial role in the correct
implementation of state schemes. It is a ‘sister legislation’ of the RTI (Government of India
2005). Both are premised on the belief that the state bureaucracy produces the prescribed
documents, becomes the accurate representation of reality, and can be accessed and preserved
by the masses.

Features of the policy

The NREGA, 2005, is one of the world’s largest livelihood security measures. Aimed at
livelihood security, it has constitutionally enshrined the right to work for all rural citizens of
India by providing them with 100 days of guaranteed wage employment per year to every
household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work (Government of
India 2008). The operational guidelines of the scheme declare it as a paradigm shift from
previous schemes and the concept of legal guarantee of employment plays a major role in
this. The state is bound by law to respond in case the 100 days has not been reached. The
scheme has a rights-based character, legal guarantee, and transparency-accountability-
participation linkages.

Implementation
Although criticized during its developing stage based on the argument that it would cause
further corruption, advocates of NREGA responded by saying that the differential legal status
of this program, coupled with the strong transparency safeguards, would help empower the
laborer and allow him/her to challenge corrupt state officials.

Early Documentation

NREGS begins when adult members from village households register themselves as workers
under the NREGA by appealing to the state, normally to the Gram Panchayat (or GP; village
council), either orally or in print. The written format shall contain relevant details such as
names, age, etc.; the printed form can be obtained from the GP. Post verification by an
appropriate official, a document called the job card is issued to the household meant for all
the adult members in it. After this, an application is to be submitted in writing to the state,
written or on a printed form and then every applicant is given a dated receipt for the same. In
case the applicant is not provided with employment within 15 days from the date of the
receipt, an unemployment allowance at approved rates is provided to the worker. If work is
provided, it should be picked from the list of permissible jobs specified by the act and from
the projects that all villages have been assigned to prepare at the beginning of the year. The
list must be approved technically and administratively by the correct authorities. Apart from
this, measurement books and asset registers are also an important part of the process.

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Job card

Describe in the operational guidelines as a “critical legal document, which also helps to
ensure transparency and protect laborers against fraud” (Government of India 2008:2022), its
fundamental purpose is to allow laborers to verify what the state claims it has officially paid
in wages. Thus, it contains a photograph of the registered workers, plus the core details of the
number of days and hours worked for the NREGS and wages earned. All monitoring of the
scheme revolves around the scrutiny of these job cards. Entries on job cards are read against
the official muster rolls to see whether any discrepancies in accounts exist. However, during
the fieldwork, the author discovered a profusion of fake documents, and a stark difference
between the state’s version and the laborer’s testimony was seen. In some instances, the
villagers weren’t aware that they even had a right to ask for this document. In other cases,
“ghosts” were found to exist on the muster rolls: they had legitimate job cards, and thus a
legitimate existence. The discovery of these gross incompetencies became possible only
because laborers now had a way of ascertaining their wages and protesting in case, they were
being denied their rightful wages. Hence, it is through the examination of the job card, the
operations of the state are believed to have been made transparent.

Maintenance of muster rolls

A key document like the job card, follows the format given in the operational guidelines: it
contains its unique identity number and is certified by the program officer (PO). It also
contains the job card number, name of the worker and the days worked. The attendance and
the pay are shown against each name with a signature/thumbprint of the worker. The
guidelines further state that numbered “muster rolls will be maintained on the work site. No
kachcha (temporary) muster roll is to be used.”

Wages

They must be paid within a fortnight of the date on which work was undertaken. According
to the author, the gram panchayat vikas adhikari (GPVA; village council development
official) in Chamoli distributed the wages in cash to the workers. Whatever the means of the
payment, the entry on the job card is a must, which shall always remain with the household
that owns it. The pukka (permanent/correct) muster roll must have the same names and
figures.

Necessity of paperwork
The documentation of all the processes can be made visible only on paper. During her time in
the Chamoli district, the author observed that the government officials she spent time with
were constantly overwhelmed by the paperwork that occupied them as they went about
implementing the scheme. Therefore every minute process requires an inscription on a
permanent surface that is visibly present for all to observe and analyze, photograph, and file
away as evidence. Examples of this can be the citizens’ information board at every worksite
displaying the workers which details the cost of each public asset or the existence of the

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vigilance committee “on paper” in the form of certificates etc. Similarly, the validity of social
audits and inspections can only be ensured when they “exist on paper.”

Role of the officials and division of the district

To handle the quantity of paperwork, the district is divided into three administrative levels:
the village, the block (oversees a certain number of villages), and the district (reports to the
state capital and sometimes to New Delhi). At the village level, the GPVA is tasked with
administering the NREGS and is given the responsibility of at least six to eight village
councils. His functions include accepting the registration applications, verifying each
household’s details and registering them, issuing job cards, accepting work applications,
issuing dated receipts, preparing and maintaining lists of projects and annual developments,
and many other tasks. Therefore, the GPVA supervises every major administrative task
related to the NREGS. However, the NREGS was not the only scheme under his/her purview,
for according to the author, a dozen schemes had been operating simultaneously in each
village. Adding to the work burden was the reality of the poor connectivity of the Himalayan
villages, leading to the “jeep” being identified as the vehicle of state surveillance.

Some of the tasks described are the official responsibility of the PO of the NREGS. In
Uttarakhand’s context, the block development officer (BDO) plays the appointed role of the
PO. However given that approximately 60,000 families, divided into nine blocks were
registered under the NREGA in Chamoli, the task of documenting and administering each
village by the PO was almost impossible. Meanwhile, an entirely different system of
reporting at the block and district level was discovered. The block was supposed to oversee
the work in every village and then collate all the information. To deal with the sea of
documents that were created, more personnel were hired. In this context, an NGO was hired
to recruit additional contract-based staff. This new staff was described by local government
officials as “professionals.” Despite these efforts, the quantum of paperwork continued to
burden the officials, making the scheme impossible for them to implement.

The Crisis of Implementation

Throughout her fieldwork, the author received complaints from the officials about the
dilemma of the paperwork and implementation of the scheme. But further, she discovered
that the volume of the much-bemoaned paperwork was not the reason behind this crisis, but
the work that was being created by certain transparent-making documents. She was initially
perplexed by this, given the socioeconomic profile of Chamoli; it is on the Indian Planning
Commission’s list of “200 most backward districts” in the country, which was the reason why
it was made eligible to receive NREGA’s benefits in the first round. Further, a high level of
distress migration by men seeking employment in urban areas was also seen. The assumption
that people would be more comfortable working in their villages on productive assets and
thus curtail distress migration marks a key objective of the NREGA.

The author also saw a failure in disbursal of funds given in the first set, which was based on
the annual development plan that Chamoli had prepared. Given the intense enthusiasm
caused by the implementation of the scheme, immense pressure had been created on district
authorities to spend the money as quickly as possible, so that an appeal for a second
installment of funds could be made. After all, the use of funds was the primary objective of

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these development officers. Further, there was also a lot of pressure to implement this
flagship scheme of the Government of India.

The author then draws a parallel between the paramparik bandobast (traditional system)
present in the district until the advent of the scheme and the NREGS. She talks about the
concept of Contractor Raj, how public works schemes are openly acknowledged as being
primarily run by contractors who would use substandard materials and employ poor laborers
from nearby areas, exploiting them in the process. The nexus between the government
officials and the contractors was so strong that it was incredibly hard to divorce them from
each other. Thus in many villages like Chamoli, the village headperson was the hired
contractor or in close relations with the local contractor and this allowed for the manipulation
of funds and documents. In direct recognition of this social problem, the NREGA makes
employing contractors for the execution of the Act a legally punishable offense. It created a
stringent system of double accounting, which includes a large number of corresponding
documents and a central document (the job card).

Conclusion
Transparency is a dominant ideal for any development effort undertaken in India. Studies of
transparency in other contexts point out that the advent of its discourse, practice, and
institutionalization is a recent occurrence, and assessments of the rise of auditing techniques
vary. In India’s case, the introduction of social audit and the idea of transparency, monitoring,
and accountability has been received with much enthusiasm, as can be seen from the
examples of RTI and NREGA. Concerning these practices, the author has located the positive
features and the inefficiencies of the policy, while documenting the implementation of this
scheme in the Himalayan district of Chamoli, Uttarakhand. She has also described the
importance of performing practices that result in the material production of official
attestations of transparency or transparent-making documents.