Six years after the launch of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNAREGA), the Centre is soon to commission a first-ever third party evaluation of the flagship scheme in over 100 districts spread across the country. The exercise is tipped to be largest ever conducted to evaluate the performance of any of the scheme of the Central government.
The evaluation, which will be carried out by independent institutions, will review the performance of the MNAREGA in the last three years.
The ministry of rural development is of the view that the result of the evaluation would come by the end of 2012.
“The Planning Commission will shortlist independent institutions, who will conduct the evaluation in the 100 districts, which cover the length and breadth of the country. This will be the first ever third party evaluation, as so far the ministry has taken stock of the performance of the flagship scheme at its own level at small scale,” said a senior official.
Sources said that the decision to conduct the exercise was taken in one of the meeting presided over by the rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, which was also attended by the Planning Commission member Mihir Shah.
In one of the review meeting of the MNAREGA, sources said it has been found the participation of the scheduled caste people has gone down a bit, while the benefit of the flagship scheme has been reached out to over 5.5 crore people out of the total registered number of 11 crore under the scheme.
The exercise to evaluate the flagship scheme has come in the backdrop of the ministry taking note of the fact that few of the states are lagging behind in its implementation.
The ministry official said that the states of Jharkhand, Odhisa, Uttar Pradesh are few of the states where the MNAREGA implementation has not been found satisfactory.
“The result of the evaluation exercise will help the ministry in giving new direction to the MNAREGA along with concentrated focus on areas where there is laxity,” added the official.