• Dr. Udit Raj, Chairman, KKC Deptt.

Shameless Modi government never admitted MGNREGA mistake, is now killing the scheme for rural workers silently

Since 1960, 30 years were expended in struggling to find suitable employment schemes in India’s vast rural hinterland. The experiences of these decades provided important lessons to the government. Resultantly, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 or MGNREGA, earlier known as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act or NREGA ACT was passed in 2005 under the Congress-led UPA government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to ensure at least 100 days’ employment to rural workers. It is an Indian Labour Law and social security measure that aims to guarantee the ‘Right to Work’.

PM Modi has never liked this scheme, and vilified it on the floor of the Parliament, saying “it was monument to the poverty” of the Congress. The Modi government was forced to rely on this great welfare scheme during the years of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2021 and 2022. Had MGNREGA not existed, imagine the plight of rural unorganised workers during COVID! Shamelessly, PM Modi never admitted his mistake, and is now killing off the scheme by cutting budgets, delaying payments, and introducing conditions like the NMMS app and Aadhar-linked bank accounts which will make it very difficult for rural workers to benefit from it.

During the pandemic times, Rs. 1,11,500 crores were allocated to MGNREGA (in revised estimates 2020-21), which saved the lives of crores of people. However, even this allocation was not enough to provide 100 days’ employment to the workforce available in the country. Since then, the budget has been reduced every year this year, it has been cut to Rs. 60,000 crores, about half of the peak, and even lower than before the pandemic.

FY 2017-18 18-19 19-20 20-21 21-22 22-23 23-24 MGNREGA Allocation (Rs. crore) 55,167 61,830 71,002 1,11,500 98,000 89,400 60,000

Currently, about 15 crore households are involved in this scheme, but now the budget has been cut even lower than 5 years ago. Due to these heavy cuts, these families are unable to get the rights of 100 days. In fact, the current budget can provide only 26 days of work in a year. To fully meet the objectives of MGNREGA, about 3,00,000 crores of funding is needed.

This clearly shows how Modi Govt is so anti-workers. It is hell bent upon scrapping this social justice plan altogether.

State governments are finding it hard to continue MGNREGA works due to acute shortage of funds. Many states are approaching the Modi government time-and-again for the pending arrears, but it is turning a deaf ear. The unscrupulous and undeclared tactic of the government is to discourage the scheme by not allowing demands of works to be uploaded on the portal. The wages are very low and there is no parity across the country. Besides, some local governments are reluctant to implement it and the Central Govt. has no interest to follow it up with them.

Most of the states in India are not using 100% of the funds and corruption at the local level is very high. In the original scheme, material cost was not to exceed 40% in any Gram Panchayat. This was to ensure that the scheme is mostly for workers, not contractors. In 2016, the Modi Govt. changed the unit where 60:40 ratio was compulsory to the district. After the base unit has been changed, misuse is rampant in many places, where 80 to 90% of works are done by tractors, JCB, Harvesters and other tools. This defeats the social and economic justice plank of the scheme.

Furthermore, the Modi govt. has mandated the use of ‘National Mobile Monitoring System’ app for attendance. This is forcing the workers to mark attendance between 7 to 10 am and in the afternoon between 2 to 5 pm. Every ‘mate’ now must have a smartphone. But many cannot afford expensive smartphones especially women, Dalits and Adivasis, and they may not even necessarily be tech-savvy. There are also many issues in rural areas - sometimes, mobile is not charged, electricity is unavailable, internet connectivity is not available or the server is down and does not respond. In such cases, workers cannot work for the whole day.

One more way the Modi government is killing the scheme is by forcing ‘Aadhaar-based Payment System’. This is a very complicated system and the government’s own data shows that 57% of workers do not use it. As a result, workers who work are not getting paid! This is illegal and anti-worker.

The Modi government should either give all mates smartphones, or scrap the NMMS app. It should also immediately compensate all workers who have lost their wages due to technical errors, and strengthen transparency and accountability through open muster rolls and social audits.

Based on Press Briefing on April 26, 2023