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Despite a rise in household registrations under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the rural jobs scheme failed to generate adequate employment in 2024-25, with persondays and average work days per household both falling, a new analysis has found.
According to a report by nonprofit LibTech India, registered households under the scheme rose by 8.6 per cent, but persondays generated dropped by 7.1 per cent. The average number of days of employment per household fell by 4.3 per cent, and only 7 per cent of households completed the 100 days of work guaranteed by the scheme.
Persondays declined from 2,888.3 million to 2,684.4 million, while the number of households provided employment dropped from 55.1 million to 53.5 million.
LibTech, a collective of engineers, social workers and social scientists working to improve public service delivery in India, said the data reflected a growing mismatch between the scheme’s outreach and its implementation.
The report compared MGNREGA’s performance in 2024-25 with that of the year before.
Odisha saw the sharpest decline in employment, at 34.8 per cent, followed by Tamil Nadu (25.1 per cent) and Rajasthan (15.9 per cent). In contrast, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh and Bihar recorded increases of 39.7 per cent, 14.8 per cent and 13.3 per cent, respectively.
“This trend raises questions about systemic and implementation-level challenges that continue to constrain the programme’s effectiveness,” it said.
In 2024-25, 11.6 million job cards were deleted, while 13.1 million workers were reinstated. Between 2022 and 2024, the scheme witnessed mass deletions totalling 78 million job cards.
“The addition of workers was concentrated in the second half of FY 2024-25, likely due to the Union ministry of rural development’s standard operating procedures on reinstating deleted job cards,” the report said.
The analysis also found that many workers remained ineligible for the scheme due to non-compliance with the Aadhaar-Based Payment System (ABPS). Approximately 27.5 per cent of total workers and 1.5 per cent of active workers were excluded from the system during the financial year.
For the third consecutive year, the central government paused MGNREGA work in West Bengal, resulting in zero employment generation under the scheme in the state.
While multiple factors influence the demand and supply of work under MGNREGA, budget cuts and delays in wage payments have emerged as significant reasons for the decline, said Chakradhar Buddha, co-author of the report.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Development has previously raised concerns over declining central allocations and their impact on the scheme’s functioning.
For FY 2024-25, the Union government allocated Rs 86,000 crore to MGNREGA.
The report was an invitation to policymakers, practitioners and citizens alike to not just to track the trajectory of MGNREGA, but to actively steer it towards justice, resilience and equity in rural livelihoods, the paper stated.
