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An overall reduction of nearly 3.9 million payment accounts belonging to rural workers under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has been found in a recent report. Another major revelation in the report is the delayed payments for 67 million workers who haven’t received any sum for their labour since April, this year.
The deleted accounts were deemed ineligible under the Aadhaar-Based Payment System (ABPS).
The report released by LibTech, a team of engineers, social workers and social scientists working to improve public service delivery in India stated that the rural workers remain deprived of their right to work under the rural employment guarantee scheme.
The report titled MGNREGA Implementation in India: Insights and Trends, April-Sept 2024 stated that from April until October 10, 2024, around 85 lakh workers’ were deleted while 45 lakh workers were added with a net deletion of 39 lakh workers.
Between October 6, 2023 and October 10, 2024, about 8.2 crore active workers have been deleted citing ineligibility — a reduction in eight per cent of total active workers, the report found.
It is further stated that the figures still do not give a complete picture of the true state of MGNREGS in the country as there are many errors in the actions that the government has taken.
“An ongoing study by LibTech India in Andhra Pradesh found that approximately 15 per cent of these deletions were wrongful. Several news reports have also highlighted the plight of genuine workers who were wrongfully removed from Job Cards, attracting significant media attention at both national and regional levels,” it observed.
The report added that the central government’s strict implementation of the ABPS with the state governments failing to intervene to address the concerns of the workers further exacerbated the issue.
In January 2023, the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) had mandated the nationwide implementation ABPS for receiving payments under work from MGNREGA.
To become eligible for ABPS, workers have to get their Aadhaar card linked to their job card and the name on the Aadhaar card must match the name on the job card.
Also, their bank account must be Aadhaar-seeded and mapped with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), conditions that are difficult to meet for workers in rural setup and poor infrastructural assistance for meeting the official requirements.
At present, nearly 27.4 per cent of all MGNREGS workers remain ineligible for ABPS, unable to fulfil the requirements.
The findings also underscored that the employment opportunities under the scheme have dropped from 184 crores to 154 crore person days — a 16.6 per cent dip compared to previous fiscal year.
The person days decreased in 14 states and increased in six states.
The biggest drops were observed in Tamil Nadu with 59.1 per cent and Odisha at 49.7 per cent. Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh experienced the highest rise in person days with 66 per cent and 53.4 per cent respectively.
The report also observed that Assam with 22 per cent ineligible workers has the highest percentage of active workers ineligible for ABPS.
In case of all workers (active and registered), Maharashtra at 66.3 per cent has the highest ineligible percentage of workers.
“Further, only Assam and West Bengal have more than 10 per cent of active workers ineligible for ABPS and no states have more than 25 per cent ineligibility of “active workers”, the report noted.
It found that “all workers” with nine states having more than 25 per cent workers ineligible for ABPS.
Chakradhar Buddha, researcher at LibTech India, said that it is reasonable to conclude that the number of person days could have been higher if the wrong deletions of workers were corrected and restored.
This observation emphasises the consistently high and growing demand for employment opportunities under the scheme, he added.
The report called for the need for better alignment between workers’ documentation and the official requirements by the government.