Memorandum to Secretary, Rural Development Ministry on MNREGA issues

A delegation of organisations of agricultural workers met Secretary of Ministry of Rural Development Shailesh Kumar Singh and submitted a memorandum on various issues, especially problems relating to MNREGA workers at the ground level. The delegation discussed in detail several issues of MNREGA and raised various demands including need for comprehensive changes to make it efficient and people friendly.

The delegation consisted of B Venkat, General Secretary, AIAWU, Vikram Singh, Joint Secretary, AIAWU, V Sivadasan, MP Rajya Sabha and Joint Secretary, AIAWU, VS Nirmal, National Joint Secretary, BKMU and Asit Ganguly, AISKS. In a joint press statement, the organisations described as “positive” the talks with Secretary, Rural Development Ministry, who assured them that the issued raised would be addressed at the appropriate level.

The memorandum, a copy of which is available with the Rural Voice noted that agricultural labourers of India are the ones who work hard to feed and clothe the people, but they are the ones who are the most deprived in socio economic indicators. Extreme poverty, unsteady employment and lower wages combined with lack of social security measures and old age support have resulted in great suffering for the agricultural workers, it said. The rural India has been at the receiving end of inflation, unemployment and economic slowdown. They are yet to recover from the shocks induced by demonetisation and Covid.

“At this critical juncture, it is essential that rural India and especially the agricultural labourers are given a helping hand. There is a need to increase governmental spending for the rural development and one major area that demands our immediate attention is the MGNREGA,” it said, adding, “It is unfortunate that the government is not providing sufficient attention and resources to the scheme.” The amount to be released to the states is often not released on time leading to delay in payment of wages, it said.

“The scheme needs comprehensive changes to make it efficient and people friendly. There is a need to do away with the biometric verification as it results in exclusion of many from remote areas. During this period, in West Bengal, MGNREGS has totally collapsed because of the wrong policies of both the State and Union government. It should be corrected and the interests of the workers in West Bengal should be protected,” the memorandum noted. 

There is a need to urgently increase the amount sanctioned for the scheme and clear dues on time. Addressing the distress of the rural poor should be the prime concern of the government, the organisations said and demanded actions on the demands raised by the agricultural workers so that the right to life and livelihoods of the rural poor are protected.

The rural economy of India has not yet recovered fully from its Covid-19 pandemic unemployment scenario. The employment growth in India is likely to decline further which would invariably add on to the worsening scenario of unemployment, poverty, malnutrition, stunted growth of children and child mortality in India.

In this context the more financial assistance to the programmes like MGNREGS is very necessary. The continuous reduction of financial allocation to the projects like MGNREGS will affect the life of the common man in our country. In order to provide average days of employment of less than 50 days in most of the states in India against the assured days of employment of 100 days per households in a rural India, the allocation should have been higher by 6% than the previous year’s average, given the rate of retail inflation in India.

The Government of India should release the latest annual data on employment and unemployment in India, Periodical Labour Force Survey (PLS), for 2021-22 and 2022-23.  Similarly, the latest data on Per Capita Monthly Consumer Expenditure Survey conducted by NSSO has also not yet been released and therefore the latest data available for the estimation of people below poverty line still continue to rely on the outdated survey data conducted in 2011-12.

In the absence of the official release of the employment data, there is no other alternative but depend on the data released by non-governmental sources such as Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) and the data published by Ashoka University’s Centre for Economic Data (CEDA). The CMIE has estimated that 14 million jobs (3.4%) of the workforce have been lost between January 2020 and October 2022.

There has been a surge in unemployment rate to the tune of 34% for youth in the age group of 15-19. It is a massive destruction of the valuable labour power in the country. The people in rural India are unable to migrate to urban centres in search of employment for the reason that the urban unemployment particularly of women has substantially declined during the post pandemic period. For instance, female work participation rate in urban India has declined to 6.3% in December 2022 from 11% in 2019.

The memorandum demanded 200 days of work annually and minimum Rs. 600 wage per day in all over India and withdrawing the advisory of directing allocation of funds and implementation of MNREGA according to caste groups, besides online attendance through NMMS. Delinking wage payment from the Aadhaar-Based Payment System (ABPS) and allocation of Rs 2.56 lakh crore for MNREGA are some other demands. It said that given the demand driven character of MNREGA, payment of all pending wages should be made immediately.

“Check the corruption under MNREGA works through social audit and increase budget for social audit,” the memorandum said, asking the government to ensure pension for MNREGS and Agricultural and Rural workers after age of 60, besides provision of basic facilities at MNREGA work sites.