NREGA shines for Tripura women

The earthen road that connects Doctors Tilla area of Purba Barjala gram panchayat to Mandai main road in Jirania block of West Tripura district, constructed under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), was completed in August last year. The one kilometre long road has provided the villagers, mostly the womenfolk, immense satisfaction, not only because that they now need not walk a long distance to reach the market area, but because the construction of the road gave them an opportunity to earn.

The brick soling of the road is likely start in this year for which they are now eagerly waiting. The construction work involving a total cost of Rs.73,800 started on 15 July last year, generated 1230 person days in the village, and was completed within one and half months. For the women engaged in the work, mostly belonging to the Bengali community, this provided extra earnings for their families. In fact, ever since the NREGA schemes have been implemented in their locality, they have been able to augment their family income. The male folk of the village move to nearby towns in search of jobs, where they can earn between Rs.120 to Rs.150 per day on an average. Lack of job opportunities for women in the area has made them remain at home. In such a situation, the NREGA projects have provided relief.

If NREGA schemes are meant for enhancement of family income for women in Purba Barjala village, for the tribal women belonging to Tripuri tribe in Chargharia, a village under the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC), earning under NREGA project is crucial for their living. These landless tribals have no means of livelihood except depending on daily wage earnings in nearby town or in brick-making industries, which is not ensured everyday.

“There is no work available for women. The two kilometre road construction work under NREGA gave us the opportunity to work and earn something. But it was completed before the state assembly election. After the election, we are looking forward to more jobs under the scheme,” said Piranjay Debbarma, a senior woman of the village.

Be it for an increase in the family income or a crucial tool for living, Tripura engages a substantial number of women in NREGA projects as compared to other northeastern states. In some pockets like Jirania and Dukli blocks, participation of women in NREGA works is amazing. In Dukli Gram Sabha of Dukli Block, 10 km away from the capital city Agartala, percentage of women engaged in NREGA schemes has goes up to 70 to 80 per cent, says S R Choudhury, the Block Development Officer.

“This is because NREGA works fetch a relatively low wage – about Rs. 85 per day. Because of this, menfolk show little interest in these works. The daily wage, even for unskilled work, is much higher. For skilled jobs, the men get as much as Rs. 200 per day,” the BDO says.

The Minister for Rural Development, Jitendra Choudhury, while acknowledging that the high women participation in NREGA schemes is a very positive aspect, adds that as the left-front government of the state has been able to ensure substantial job opportunities for the male folk in rural pockets, women have come forward to take part in NREGA works. Also, the state has moved for multi-cropping agriculture practices instead of traditional single cropping, which also keeps the men busy in fields, giving women more opportunities to avail of NREGA facilities. In Tripura, in the non-tribal segment, the agriculture practice is an all-male activity.

Another reason is, perhaps, women feel safe at the work place in a better socio-economic environment, the minister adds. Stating that participation of women is highly encouraging he says that it would definitely give rural economy a boost in the near future.

Statistics say

In Khedarnal village of Amarpur block in North Tripura district, 100 person days have been generated for all the 321 families during 2007-08, under the NREGA implementation schemes. This is for the first time in the country that 100 person days were generated for all the families in a village selected for NREGA schemes. Altogether 32,100 person days were generated under the scheme during the year.

A state progress report of NREGA activities has recorded percentage of person days for women as 44.51, which is higher than the national average of 42.52. The state has the highest record so far in terms of employing women in NREGA projects amongst the northeastern states. In some of the major tribal states, percentage of employment for women are: Arunachal Pradesh - 29.58, Nagaland -29.36 and Mijoram – 36.62. In matrilineal Meghalaya, it is only 30.87 while Assam records 30.85 women employment and Manipur records 32.80.

The department of rural development records generation of person-days as 181.04 lakh, with creation of an average 38.86 person-days per family in 2007-08. The state recorded issuing of 4,65,779 job cards for the year 2007-08 in three districts including West Tripura, South Tripura and Dhalai. While Dhalai was the first to be selected for the NREGA projects in 2006-07, West and South Tripura were selected in 2007-08. The North district has been selected only in 2008-09, and works are yet to be implemented.

Percentage of person-days for scheduled tribes that constitute 31 per cent of the total population was 41.95 during the year. In Dhalai district, 76.03 person-days per family have been generated in 2007-08.

“Taking the Dhalai district experience, the first NREGA district in our state into account, we are expecting generation of more person-days in 2008-09 in West and South districts also. Normally it takes some time in planning during the first year. Implementation process shows good results only from the second year after selection of the district for NREGA scheme,” says Brijesh Pandey, secretary, rural development. Even in South district, the department could generate 100 person-days for 216 families in very first year of NREGA implementation, he says. The NREGA manual ensures 100 days job-guarantee to all families identified for NREGA schemes.

Aim to create permanent assets

One of the objectives of NREGA implementation projects in Tripura is creation of permanent assets by construction of road infrastructures. In Jirania Block for instance, out of the 33 NREGA projects for 2007-08, 14 were brick soling road construction projects.

The state records construction of 6,716 kilometres of road under NREGA projects in 2007-08. In Dhalai, another 962.66 kilometres have been constructed during that year. Justifying the major thrust on road construction, the minister says that while road construction is a permanent asset building process aimed at accelerating developmental activities at grassroots, the state government has set a target that every hamlet having a population of 250 will be covered with a blacktopping road within next two years.

“Ensuring person days is not the sole objective of Tripura model of NREGA implementation. Our thrust also rests on creation of permanent assets in the state”, Pandey says.

Apart from the road construction schemes, other projects that have a priority in NREGA schemes include water conservation and water harvesting, micro-irrigation works, renovation of traditional water-bodies, fisheries, land development, flood control and protection, culverts and RCC bridges.

Performance

In terms of performance of NREGA implementation, Tripura ranks second in the country. The record of other northeastern states as regards their performance: Mizoram – fifth in the country, Manipur – seventh, Assam – thirteenth, Meghalaya – eighteenth, Arunachal – nineteenth and Nagaland – twentieth. The ranking parameters include transparency, accountability, vigilance, monitoring, evaluation, physical performance indicator, financial performance indicator, staffing, training and others, according to NREGA guidelines.

http://www.indiatogether.org/2008/jun/wom-nrega.htm

Does the IAEA agreement hide us from the Hyde Act?

Various commentators have argued that the draft IAEA Safeguards Agreement gives India considerable leeway, denied it under the Hyde Act, in taking corrective action in case fuel supplies are interrupted. To be fair, unlike government spokespersons, some of these analysts concede that all imported reactors will remain permanently under safeguards. But one of the claims adduced by these non-official defenders in support of the Agreement is that India can unilaterally withdra w from IAEA safeguards its indigenous reactors that are made subject to the Agreement, provided all the imported fuel is taken out.

This curious conclusion flows from a wholly untenable reading of Article 29 of the Agreement, which states: “The termination of safeguards on items subject to this Agreement shall be implemented taking into account the provisions of GOV/1621 (20 August 1973).” Since the latter is a restricted document of the IAEA’s Board of Governors, these non-official analysts have speculated that with respect to termination of safeguards, the import of GOV/1621 into Article 29 has let non-supplied facilities off the hook, by requiring them to be under safeguards only as long as they use imported fuel! From this, they have jumped to the conclusion that therefore for such indigenous facilities, India does not even need to invoke its preambular ‘right’ to take “corrective measures.”

Nowhere does GOV/1621 provide the remotest sanction for any such interpretation. I happen to have the text of this restricted 1973 document. It originated from the urging of “a substantial number of Governors … that there should be a greater degree of standardisation than in the past with respect to the duration and termination of such agreements as may henceforth be concluded under the Agency’s Safeguards System … for the application of safeguards in connection with nuclear material, equipment, facilities or non-nuclear material supplied to States by third parties.”

Two concepts are clearly laid out in the IAEA document for these future agreements: (a) “the duration of the agreement should be related to the period of actual use of the items in the recipient State”; and (b) “the provisions for terminating the agreement should be formulated in such a way that the rights and obligations of the parties continue to apply in connection with supplied nuclear material and with special fissionable material produced, processed or used in or in connection with supplied nuclear material, equipment, facilities or non-nuclear material, until such time as the Agency has terminated the application of safeguards thereto...”

Further, by way of exposition of these concepts, the Annex to the document makes it clear that after termination, “the rights and obligations of the parties, as provided for in the agreement, would continue to apply in connection with any supplied material or items and with any special fissionable material produced, processed or used in or in connection with any supplied material or items which have been included in the inventory, until such material or items had been removed from the inventory” (emphasis added). The only way such “items or non-nuclear material could be removed from the purview of the agreement” is “if they had been consumed, were no longer usable for any nuclear activity relevant from the point of view of safeguards, or had become practically irrecoverable.”

GOV/1621 ensures that all such materials “would be subject to safeguards until the Agency had terminated safeguards on that special fissionable and nuclear material in accordance with the provisions of the Agency’s Safeguards System. Thus, the actual termination of the operation of the provisions of the Agreement would take place only when everything had been removed from the inventory” (emphasis added).

The effect of GOV/1621, therefore, is to tighten and make more restrictive the application of IAEA safeguards to all supplied nuclear material, facilities, and items. But it is wholly fanciful to say that it empowers or even allows India to take non-supplied facilities made subject to the Agreement out of safeguards, if they no longer use supplied fuel.

For indigenous nuclear facilities that have been built without supplies from any third party, we have to consider two additional Articles of the Agreement. One is that “items” for safeguards are governed by Article 11(a), which defines items to include: “any facility listed in the Annex to this Agreement, as notified by India.” The second is Article 32, which explicitly states: “Safeguards shall be terminated on a facility listed in the Annex after India and the Agency have jointly determined that the facility is no longer usable for any nuclear activity relevant from the point of view of safeguards” (emphasis added).

If we accept that Article 32 will come into play for taking facilities out of safeguards, there are three conditions that need to be fulfilled. First, both parties — India and the IAEA — need to agree to this; it is not a unilateral decision for India to make. Secondly, the facility must no longer be usable for any nuclear activity. Any facility that produces nuclear energy is obviously usable for nuclear activity. Lastly, the facility must be “relevant from the point of view of safeguards.” Any facility offered by India under Article 14 for safeguards continues to be relevant for safeguards. The issue of imported fuel is extraneous to any of these considerations.

Under the separation plan, India is offering several facilities for safeguards — not just reactors, but also heavy water plants, research and storage facilities. All these will be under safeguards if they are included in the Annex by India and will be governed by the Articles of the Agreement. Linking import of fuel with the duration of the safeguards on facilities is not relevant here. Research facilities, for example, do not even import fuel. Is it then possible that once we have offered them for safeguards, we can take them out any time we want?

Let us take the next contention that once corrective measures figure in the Agreement, it does not matter whether they are in the preamble or in the operative part of the Agreement. The issue is not whether the preamble is a part of an agreement or a treaty. The issue here is whether the scope of termination of safeguards, as defined in Articles 29-32, can be overridden by India having recourse to unspecified “corrective measures” mentioned in the preamble. Clearly, such a reading will be fanciful; else the operative part of the agreement will be rendered a nullity.

It is well established in international law that a preamble can be used to give a treaty context and help interpret its clauses. However, in no case can a preamble override explicit provisions in Articles of a treaty or be used to create new rights or obligations. If this were so, the Non-Proliferation Treaty would have led decades ago to nuclear disarmament, as this objective is set out in the preamble! It has not happened because Article 6 of the NPT merely asks the nuclear weapons states to negotiate disarmament in good faith. The operative part lacks the teeth to implement the lofty objective the preamble sets out.

The issue of fuel supply assurances and strategic fuel reserves is of little consequence in this Safeguards Agreement. The IAEA is not a body that deals with either. The preamble merely notes that the “essential basis” of India’s concurrence to the acceptance of IAEA safeguards is the conclusion of international arrangements for reliable and uninterrupted fuel supplies and support for building strategic fuel reserves. Whatever may be the basis of a country entering into an international agreement, the articles of the treaty do not get voided simply because this basis is no longer valid. The withdrawal and termination clauses govern the actual withdrawal or termination. It is pretty much like marriage: love may be the basis of a marriage but the demise of love for one party is not a sufficient legal ground for divorce.

Asked whether India could ever withdraw its reactors from safeguards, Dr R.B. Grover of the Department of Atomic Energy claimed (in a press conference on July 12) that India could first claim a material breach under Article 52(c) of the Agreement and then take whatever action it wanted under “the combination of [Articles] 29, 30(f), 10, 4, and the preamble.” Again, while Article 29 covers both facilities and material for the duration of safeguards for facilities, we have to read this provision along with Article 32. As explained earlier, Article 32 is quite explicit that once any facility is offered for safeguards, they will continue to apply in perpetuity. Article 30(f) is very much part of Article 30, which specifically pertains only to material. To claim specific rights over facilities using an Article that pertains to material will not help India in any way.

It is not in India’s interest to keep the provisions of the Agreement vague. The dispute settlement body in the IAEA is not a neutral umpire — it is the agency’s Board of Governors. Here, politics is the dominant issue in interpretation — not legalese. As the Iran case shows, despite that country having a legal right to the full nuclear fuel cycle, the IAEA Board of Governors referred it to the United Nations Security Council for sanctions at the insistence of the United States. The majority, including the Government of India, fell in line with the U.S., not because they were convinced of its legal case but because of its sheer muscle power.

Therefore to believe that the vague term “corrective measures” included in the preamble of the Safeguards Agreement will help India later to put on the term whatever interpretation it wishes to will simply not wash. If it comes to the crunch, the Hyde Act provisions will prevail. This is what is inbuilt in the India-IAEA Agreement, the government’s spin notwithstanding.

(Prabir Purkayastha is a founding member of the Delhi Science Forum and an analyst on nuclear disarmament and energy issues.)

Courtesy, The Hindu newspaper.