JOIN USAmid row over moves to tweak MGNREGS to stop doling out easy money, the Centre is to provide smart phones at half price to Gram Panchayat officials monitoring the rural job scheme.
GP officers overseeing implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme can now own a subsidised smart phone, with the Union Government paying half its price.
Rural Development Minister Nitin Gadkari seems all set to brush aside protests by civil society activists and a section of development economists and go ahead to tweak the UPA regime’s pet programme and stop “doling out easy money” to beneficiaries.
His ministry has of late reworked and revived a proposal to provide smart phones or tablets to all Gram Panchayat functionaries as well as members of the technical and supervisory staff involved with implementation of the scheme across the country.
The government will pay up to Rs 10,000 to each Gram Panchayat functionary or member of the technical or supervisory staff to purchase a smart phone or a tablet, which will at least have an Android Jellybean 4.1 operating system.
Half of the cost of the phone will then be recovered from the functionary in 10 equal interest-free instalments.
When the recipient pays back half the amount, he or she will own the device, according to a note the Ministry of Rural Development sent out to all the states.
The Bharat Nirman volunteers who have been identified in various blocks will work as Local Level Monitors for rural development programme, it added.
A Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) note says, the government is keen to launch the Mobile Monitoring System to improve supervision in implementation of the MGNREGS and provide for real-time data upload from the worksite to the scheme website.
The scheme is intended to empower Gram Panchayats and other implementing agencies with live data from the MGNREGS worksites, allow online and real-time updating of database, provide for real-time visibility of data for complete transparency and facilitate easy verification of location of assets created with the help of geo-tagging.