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Civil society groups seek help from Opposition parties to ‘save’ MGNREGA

Alleging that the NDA Government is on its way to gradually doing away with the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA), many civil society groups and labour organisations have appealed to Opposition parties to support their demands for an increase in budgetary allocation for the scheme.

In a briefing held for the Members of Parliament on March 14 at the Deputy Speakers Hall, Constitution Club, New Delhi, the civil society members urged them to raise the issues of crores of labourers and workers who have “not been paid since December 2021”.

They highlighted the issue of inadequate funding, adverse changes in the attendance system as well as the method of payment. The broad aim of the briefing was to help MPs defend peoples’ right to work under the MGNREGA.

MPs of the Opposition parties who attended the event were Sanjay Singh (Aam Aadmi Party), Digvijaya Singh, Uttam Kumar Reddy and Kumar Ketkar (Congress Party), S. Senthilkumar (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam), Jawhar Sircar (All India Trinamool Congress Party) among others.

They deliberated upon the ways to force the government to enhance budgetary allocation and reverse the recent amendments in the mode of payment which has proved “disastrous” to the interest of workers.

Beginning the presentation, Jean Drèze, visiting Professor at Ranchi University, said that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has unleashed an unprecedented three-pronged attack on MGNREGA — inadequate funding, the introduction of an Aadhaar-based Payment System (ABPS), and the inception of a real-time attendance system through the National Mobile Monitoring Software (NMMS) app.

Prof. Dreze said that this year’s funding was only ₹60,000 crore, which is the lowest allocation ever in the history of the programme.

“Funds run out and projects come to a halt. The wages get delayed and are accumulated for months,” Prof. Dreze said, adding that the introduction of digital attendance has deprived the workers of their wages due to technical and network glitches.

“Aadhaar-based Payment is so complicated system that even many bankers fail to understand its functionality and the majority of workers cannot be paid through this system. It is illegal and criminal not to pay wages to workers for the work that they have done” he added.