The lockdown due to Coronavirus spread has made a massive economic impact on the most vulnerable sections of the society.
In this light, here is a look at the response in relation to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).
What are the existing concerns with NREGA?
The wage rates under this rural employment programme are abysmally low.
Also, access to work and regular payments has been a challenge for workers.
Insufficient fund allocation and perpetual delays in releasing funds by the Centre have led to extensive delays in wage payments.
As on March 2020, the total pending NREGA wages was at Rs 6,000 crore.
Pending material payments have mounted to Rs 9,700 crore.
Besides this, misleading information and interpretation of data has been commonplace in the implementation of the scheme in the last 6 years.
On the other hand, negligible monitoring of NREGA on the ground and lack of sufficient social audits has diminished the spirit of the scheme.
What is the present relief package?
The Finance Ministry has announced a Rs 1.7 lakh crore relief package in response to dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
MGNREGS daily wage rate was increased by Rs 20 (Rs 202 from Rs 182).
This will result in a Rs 2,000 increase in annual income of workers under the schemes.
NREGA workers can work on ground by following the central advisory for maintaining social distancing.
Later, the rural development ministry announced that they were releasing Rs 4,431 crore to different states.
This is to clear the arrears of wages and materials under different NREGA schemes.
It added that all pending payments will be made till April 10, 2020.
Are these measures effective in addressing the distress?
Practically, no additional resources have been allocated to NREGA.
The wage increment was done as part of routine yearly process of wage notification.
The revised wages were notified 3 days before the relief package was announced.
It bears no connection with the additional emergency measures in regards with the Covid-19 pandemic.
The increment of wages too is abysmally low.
It is far less than agricultural minimum wages of respective states.
No one knows what NREGA employment levels are going to be in 2020-21, so the average increase in wages by Rs 20 is arbitrary.
The relief towards clearing arrears would mean that a significant amount of the Budget 2020-21 will have to be spent on clearing arrears of FY 2019-20.
Notably, even the Rs 4,431 crore would be inadequate to settle all dues.
What should be done?
NREGA workers belong to the most vulnerable sections of the society.
The urgent need now is to release all money pending across states and give them full compensation for delay in payments.
The advisory on social distancing norms for NREGA is not pragmatic.
This is because working in NREGA involves processes with significant physical proximity.
Many state governments have decided to suspend NREGA work temporarily, which is a relief.
In such a scenario, it is imperative that the government pays full notified minimum wage for each day of the lockdown.
As thousands of migrant workers returned to their native villages, many more will need work under NREGA over the next year.
In short, workers’ dependence on NREGA for survival and coping with immediate stress will increase manifold in the country.
Given this, the number of days of work per rural household should not be limited to 100 days per year.
Categories of permissible work should also be expanded to include specific individual benefit schemes and community assets construction.
The work demand can be aggravated by focusing on water-related schemes that are the need of the hour.
Unlike the affluent and the middle class, the poor have an additional burden of fighting with hunger and distress.
So, any relief measure in the interim period and in the long-run should be in line with this fact.
