Never perhaps in its decade of existence has the rural employment guarantee programme —MGNREGA—been more relevant than it is now. After two weak monsoons, the critically low water levels in reservoirs have resulted in drought-like conditions in large parts of the country. Critics of the scheme would argue that even in its best days, the programme hasn’t accounted for more than 2% of the work. Whether that’s because people didn’t ask to be employed or because there was a cap on the funds allocated is not clear. But in the current environment, more people are likely to show up for a job and it is an opportunity to use the scheme effectively. As economist Ajit Ranade has argued in an article in Mint, there needs to be a ‘surge’ in spends. The allocation for MGNREGA for FY17 is R38,500 crore, and as Ranade suggests, much of this needs to be pumped in over the next few months. While some state governments are reportedly upset that the wages paid out under the scheme are below the minimum wages—in Rajasthan, for instance, the wage is R181, up from the earlier R173 but lower than the R197 minimum wage—that is the way it should be since MGNREGA is meant to provide job-insurance, not to replace existing jobs. The average wage under MGNREGA in FY16 was R154.14, a reasonably good 27% rise over that in FY13.
It is true that the government’s track record—and this applies to the UPA as well—has not been particularly impressive; if 4.8 crore households got jobs in FY16, this is comparable with the 4.8 crore in FY14 and 5 crore in FY13. Given India’s 25 crore households, 70% of which are in rural areas, this means around a third of the households have worked on MGNREGA projects. What is more problematic is that, against the promised 100 days of work in a year, most households are getting employed for 45-50 days—this has to be increased. And to the extent the primary goal is to provide social security, it doesn’t really matter if the assets created are meaningful—though there are large leakages in the beneficiaries, over a period of time, it will be important to link payments to Aadhaar numbers which, in turn, are linked to the genuinely poor.
