Forget GST disaster, alarming that Modi government is barely left with MGNREGA funds
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was brought into force by the UPA government after detailed discussions in Parliament committees, in which lawmakers, scholars and activists were involved. The Act laid down that all rural households whose members volunteer for unskilled manual labour will get 100 days’ wages at official cost. There is a reservation of 33 per cent for rural women, including for those who look after the small children of labourers and those trained to provide first aid in case of minor injuries. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2015, he dismissed MGNREGA as a “monumental blunder”. Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje wanted this rural uplift policy to be reduced to an ordinary “scheme”. But the enormity of rural poverty and lack of work led to a rethink in the NDA about the importance of MGNREGA. But even now the Union government — despite several promises — has gone in for a major fund crunch in the scheme’s budget.
Despite the Centre’s claim that this year’s MGNREGA budget allocation is the highest ever, almost 88 per cent of the funds have been exhausted just halfway through the financial year.
As of next week, only Rs 6,000 crore of the Rs 48,000 crore budget allocation for 2017-18 will be left for the implementation of the act over the next six months. The November-March period is when the work demand under MGNREGA begins to peak. The ministry of rural development has asked the finance ministry for an additional Rs 17,600 crore as part of the supplementary demand, which will be placed before the Winter Session of Parliament in December.
But the additional grant sought, if approved partly or entirely, will come in by early January 2018.
There is no surety that they will be fully cleared by the finance ministry. In the last financial year, of the Rs 15,000 crore that the rural development ministry sought in supplementary demands, the finance ministry cleared only Rs 9,000 crore.
Ministry officials have pointed out that the states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala have exhausted their budget for the entire year owing to the increase in demand for rural works due to drought or delayed rainfall. With Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh needing more funds, only Rs 6,000 crore will remain in the budget.
Several districts of MP have declared drought and a similar calamity is likely in UP as September rains were poor. Meanwhile, delays in the payment of wages continue to exacerbate the crisis.
Only 40-45 per cent wages for a month reach from the banks to the rural poor in the months when await their due. Since the rural poor have little staying capacity and cannot afford to wait for weeks, if not more than a month for payment for their work, they are often forced to seek work elsewhere at lower wages.
Therefore, poor implementation of the MGNREGA is lowering the chance of benefits to the rural poor in a country where, according to eminent scholar Jean Dreze and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s calculations, rural poverty would have been 33.8 per cent in 2009-2010.
Incidentally, the proportion of the population below the poverty line among the “multi-dimensionally poor,” in 2005-06 was 53.7 per cent. Other economists have even more grim statistics. The MGNREGA is plagued by fund shortage, delays and inadequate supervisory staff.
Ironically there has been much debate and concern about Goods and Services Tax (GST). A small fraction of that bedevilled taxation scheme, including the inclusion/exclusion of petrol and diesel, is a matter of considerable debate. Yet, the huge numbers of rural poor do not excite such interest or sympathy. Surely, this is an upside down rural support policy.
It is ironic that Mahatma Gandhi’s name was added to NREGA. Gandhi, had he been alive, would have organised yet another march in support of the rural poor. But neither the Indian state nor the civil society appears to be adequately concerned about the lives and the tribulations of the rural poor and their households. This massive chunk of the rural population is, in any case, getting only 100 days’ work per family per year!
And even this vested interest continues to siphon away.
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