Experts claim the reduced budget allocation to Rs 60,000 crore will not provide any employment to the economically vulnerable population
The central government has slashed the allocation for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme, according to the budget document released on February 1, 2023.
The government cut the spending to Rs 60,000 crore for the next financial year from Rs 89,400 crore in 2022-23. The budget for the scheme is the lowest in the past two years, which was Rs 98,468 crore and Rs 89,400 crore for the year 2021-22 and 2022-23, respectively.
Experts have called it a ‘blood bath’ of the social welfare scheme and pressed that the low allocation of funds is a direct move to kill the scheme introduced under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in 2005.
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“The low budget allocation is the first year of directly killing the scheme that serves as a lifeline for millions of poor people,” Nikhil Dey, a social activist from NREGA Sangharsh Morcha, a group working for rural development and economically deprived sections, told Down To Earth.
Over the past five years, about 21 per cent of the annual budget allocated for the scheme had been spent on clearing the pending dues from previous years, Dey said.
In 2022-2023 alone, the pending dues were estimated at Rs 16,070 crore until January 2023. “Considering the expenditure trend, the estimated dues would increase to Rs 25,800 crore by the end of the fiscal year,” he said.
During a press conference held January 31, the NREGA Sangharsh Mocha and People’s Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG) pressed the union government to allocate Rs 2.72 lakh crore in 2023-2024.
The demand was calculated after considering the pending dues and the employment needs of 5.6 crore people for 100 days per person per household.
The social activists also estimated that if the budget allocation was lowered to Rs 1.73 lakh crore and Rs 1.24 lakh crore, the workers seeking employment under the scheme would be able to avail of work for 60 days and 40 days, respectively.
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With almost half of the budget allocation spent on clearing the dues, the scheme would become redundant, Dey said.
“Practically, there would be no working days possible with the slated budget allotment. It is only going to make the lives of poor miserable and eventually kill the law itself,” Dey added.
Frequent changes in the scheme’s implementation have already acted as a slow poison to kill it, the expert claimed.
Annie Ranjan from PAEG said the law is unique among many others in the world. Here, workers get the right to work for 100 days and are compensated if their demand is not met.
“The cutting down of funds for social audits — a mechanism to prevent and identify corruption and not addressing the root causes was already in process for the past three years,” she said.
The Centre kept bringing changes in the payments, linking Aadhar cards to the scheme and bringing other technological interventions that discouraged the non-tech-savvy population in rural areas, said Ashish Ranjan from NREGA Sangharsh Mocha, Bihar.
“The National Mobile Monitoring Software (NMMS) App was made mandatory in January 2023. It demands online attendance from employees twice a day,” he said.
Also read: Graft claims in MGNREGA squeezing poor workers, millions unpaid for months
It is a tall order to demand it from rural areas with poor internet connectivity. There are thousands of cases where the attendance of the employees has not been registered despite completing work, he added.
The central government did not provide any funds to West Bengal since December 2021, said Anuradha Talwar, an activist from the state.
“The non-payment of dues for over a year has made the women workers vulnerable, especially the single mothers or destitute who have no other means of earning,” she said.
Talwar said the funds were stopped on the grounds of corrupt practices reported from the state. However, no official or bureaucrat has been punished or held accountable so far.“It is the poor who is being punished instead,” she added.
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Over the past five years, about 21 per cent of the annual budget allocated for the scheme had been spent on clearing the pending dues. Representative photo: iStock..png)
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