Statement of Shri Jairam Ramesh, General Secretary (Communications): In January 2024, the Ministry of Rural Development mandated the nationwide implementation of Aadhaar-Based Payment System (ABPS) for MGNREGS. To be eligible for ABPS, workers must meet several conditions:
1. their Aadhaar must be linked to their job card, 2. the name on the Aadhaar must match the name on the job card, 3. and their bank account must be Aadhaar-seeded and mapped with the National Payments Corporation of India. Ten months later we now have data on the catastrophic impact of this policy shift. As per analysis undertaken on the public data available on the MGNREGA portal by Lib Tech (a consortium of academics and activists), 27.4% of all registered workers (6.7 crore workers) and 4.2% of active workers (54 lakh workers) remain ineligible for ABPS. More worryingly, between April and September this year, 84.8 lakh workers registered under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) found their names deleted from the programme. This deletion coincides with the implementation of the ABPS, and so far, estimates from AP suggest that at least 15% of these deletions are wrongful. ABPS-related issues and deletions may be impacting MGNREGA as a whole. The person days (total number of workdays a person registered under the programme completes in a financial year) generated in MGNREGA have fallen 16.6% since last year. The ABPS comes in conjunction with the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS). Both these policies are resulting in the violation of the right to work on demand and the right to timely payment of wages guaranteed under the MGNREGA.

Loss of Work: 1. Workers demand for work is not registered if their accounts are not ABPS-enabled 2. ‘NREGA work is not undertaken in villages where mates do not have smartphones that support the NMMS app 3. ‘Workers’ are not signing up for NREGA work because they feel discouraged and disincentivized after having lost their wages in the past Loss of Wages: 1. Workers’ wages are not paid within the statutorily mandated period of 15 days (without any compensation for delay) 2. ‘Workers’ wages are not paid at all, because their accounts are not ABPS-enabled 3. ‘Workers’ attendance is not registered on the NMMS app due to poor Internet connectivity, server issues, or other technical issues Additionally, the budget of MNREGA is also being cut continuously and the wages for workers under it (Congress had promised a minimum of Rs. 400) is also very low. During the ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’, MGNREGS workers from across the country raised these issues at the Jan Sunwai held at Ranka, Garhwa District, Jharkhand on 14th February 2024. Eight months later, these issues continue to persist – a government-created human, economic, and institutional tragedy. The Ministry for Rural Development must immediately put a stop to this insistence on ABPS and NMMS. Furthermore, Budget of MNREGA and the daily wages of workers should be increased. - Saturday, 26 October 2024