The scheme is creating an experienced rural supervisory cadre This is one set of statistics that will embellish the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act's (nrega) utility even more and inspire the incoming government to refine the scheme further. It could also embellish the upa's record of governance in the coming weeks, provided the government's media managers get their act together. The fact that the nrega, which is aimed at providing 100 days of employment each year is making a difference to the lives of the rural poor is acknowledged by political parties across the board. Rural wages are rising, migration is down and productive assets are being created. With the general election inching closer, political parties are vying with each other to take credit for nrega. This happened recently in the Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh assembly elections, where the scheme has notched the highest percentage in terms of man-days of employment generated. Now an exercise done by the ministry of rural development shows nrega is creating permanent job opportunities in the rural area. More than 2,70,000 people have been recruited by the state governments for providing vital assistance in the implementation of the scheme. They include assistants to the sarpanch at the village level, accountants, engineers/technical assistants, programme officers and computer assistants at the block level, works managers/technical assistants, it managers/computer assistants, accountants and training coordinators at the district level; and social audit coordinators across all three levels. The major chunk of recruitments is at the village level, as nrega clearly states that 50 per cent of the public works need to be executed by gram panchayats. These are the skilled or literate assistants who help the head of the panchayat in the implementation of the scheme. Engineers and technical assistants, mostly diploma holders from local institutes constitute the second numerically large category. Along with the five crore people who are getting 100 days of employment guarantee every year, these 27 lakh oeople are contributing to the rural society and economy in more ways than one. For one thing, the recruitment of a large number of people at the village level has brought about transparency in the scheme's implementation. It had to a certain extent checked the migration of rural labour to the urban centres. In many areas, nrega is leading to the empowerment of women by offering them a unique opportunity to earn their own income. Improving living standards Since most wages for manual laboui have to be bench-marked to nrega rates, wages in the unorganised sectoi have also gone up to Rs85 a day, According to the ministry, more than five crore savings bank and post office accounts have been opened for the payment of nrega wages. The Centre has so far sunk Rs40,000 crore into the scheme during the last three years anc out of this, Rs26,000 crore is on wages This has led to an improvement in liv ing standards as well as contributed tc a demand for basic food and con sumer goods. Currently, most of the work experi ence relates to water conservation a; the. rural development ministry i: mandated to allot 90 per cent of the funds under nrega to states for taking up projects in this sphere. So far, 21 lakh rural projects have been taken uj and most of them relate to water con servation. Yet these 27 lakh people now have basic work experience ir rural area. This work force is bound tc grow as the scheme is expanded anc can be easily harvested by the corpo rate sector to deepen its foray into the rural areas as and when the econorm picks up. "Within the next few years there would be a big team of engi neers, managers and it professional: with basic work experience which wil be available to India Inc," says Amit; Sharma, joint secretary in charge o nrega's implementation. The Planning Commission is nov driving the rural development min istry to widen the scope of publii works, now that there is a skilled man agerial cadre in place, to build othe permanent assets like roads and school buildings.