A National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill is on the anvil of the Parliament. Already there is much fanfare centring round that, as if it is going to open a new vista in the employment horizon of the country. But on a careful observation, it will be found that it is nothing but a big hoax akin to committing a fraud on the teeming millions languishing in abject poverty, deprivation and bereft of any gainful engagement.

On the eve of the polls, all the vote-seeking bourgeois parties joined by the pseudo-lefts showered a lot of enchanting promises couched in mellifluous language. The issue of guaranteeing employment to rural poor was one of such items in the cosmetic agenda of the Congress and its allies including the CPI(M), CPI. The Common Minimum Programme (CMP) adopted by the Congress-led UPA and duly endorsed by its sham Marxist friends also has a mention of this. But then things went to the backburner. It may be recalled that sometime, when the issue was raked up, it was the CPI(M), which is committed to provide stability to the Congress-led government for full 5-year term and is running the West Bengal state government eliciting lot of accolades from the big monopoly houses and foreign imperial capital, vehemently opposed introduction of the bill on the ground that depleted coffer of state government cannot bear the stipulated 25% cost of its implementation. Reportedly, the objection was made on the ground that such a guarantee, if provided through enactment, would empower the eligible poor to go to court if they were denied the benefits for whatsoever reason.

But when there was a lot of criticisms from the public and in the press, the central government, as a face saving measure, revived the proposal and as all indications suggest, at the instance of the CPI(M) who was receiving flaks for having shelved the scheme and hence needed to save its skin as well. But what is that the Congress-CPI(M) combination prescribes now ? The draft of the current pro-posal, on perusal, is found to be a complete farce, if not a cruel joke.

Firstly, the bill will not be applicable to the whole country, but will be applied to only certain places, that the central government would notify from time to time. Secondly, 100 days’ employment per year is proposed for one member from every poor household, and a household is defined to comprise all the people that inhabit a dwelling. For example, if the families of several brothers inhabit a dwelling as is quite common in rural joint families, only one member from among members of all those families will be eligible for employment under the proposed scheme. Thirdly, the bill proposes that the existing Minimum Wages Act will not apply to the wages for work to be provided under the proposed bill. It is well known that compliance to the Minimum Wages Act by the employers is already an exception rather than the rule, particularly in rural areas and the enforcement of this scheme is one of the major demands of the working people’s movement. So, the proposed provision of the Employment Guarantee bill will provide legal sanction to violation of the Minimum Wages Act and encourage more such violations by the rural employers. And even the few who may be benefited by the employment guaranteed by the proposed bill, will be given starvation level wages for less than one third of the year!

And of course the provision that the state governments would have to meet 30% of the cost, would remain as a permanent area of dispute and hence a readymade excuse for non-implementation.

So hypocritical is the proposal that even the bourgeois press cannot but ridicule it in words like “slated for political boondocks” and like “a set of statements regularly let off in hot air balloons.” Apart from all deceits and mockeries, it is really not known how do these political parties, craving for pelf and power, think that they can take the people for granted ? Rural Development minister Raghuvansh Singh, incidentally from Laloo’s RJD, thought the best way to tackle reality is to undermine it when he said, “We are serious but let’s be real.” The CPI(M) leaders, who the other day sarcastically remarked that the Congress must know the CPI(M) “is not a lapdog but a bull dog… and can bite as well”, now declare to have derived comfort to find the Congress “responding to their shouts” and hence there is “no need to bite any more”.

While there should be a massive resistance movement to stall the bill in the present form, it is also to be seen how the people treat these shrewd political leaders who so merrily and audaciously play with their lives.