The current crisis provides the central government with an unprecedented opportunity to expand workers’ entitlements under MNREGA. Discuss (200 Words)
Refer - The Indian Express
Enrich the answer from other sources, if the question demands.
IAS Parliament 4 years
KEY POINTS
· The initial five years of MGNREGA was a period of much progress. Expenditure and the scale of employment in the programme rose steadily till 2009-10.
· While corruption was a serious problem in the early years, introduction of bank payments in 2008 and the online management information system (MIS) in 2009 played an important role in increasing transparency in the implementation of the programme. Despite functioning with various irregularities, till 2014-15, MGNREGA exerted an upward pressure on rural agricultural wages, especially for women.
· The share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) spent on MGNREGA began to fall from 2010-11 and the annual scale of employment plateaued out till 2013-14. In 2009, the central government delinked the programme from the Minimum Wages Act. Since then, MGNREGA workers of many states have been working at unremunerative wage rates that are much less than their state minimum wages.
· The annual budgetary allocation for MGNREGA as a percentage of India’s GDP has hovered around 0.3 per cent during NDA’s term, half of what it was at its peak in 2009-10.
· Government’s push to increase bank account seeding with Aadhaar, routing of wage payments through the electronic fund management system and the move towards universal payment through direct benefit transfer. There is little evidence that these complex technologies have streamlined the payments process.
· As casual workers face unprecedented economic insecurity due to the national lockdown, the NDA government has once again resorted to MGNREGA (and the public distribution system) to stave off hunger in rural areas.
· An increase in this year’s budgetary allocation of MGNREGA by Rs 40,000 crores is a timely move by the central government. Yet, if all 140 million job card holders are to demand 100 days of work this year (a likely proposition given the economic distress), the total budget of the programme including the increased allocation, is still only about a third of what would be required to meet the demand.
PRASHANT KUMAR 4 years
Pls Review Sir
IAS Parliament 4 years
Try to elaborate MNREGA in the context of current crisis. Keep Writing.
aswin 4 years
IAS Parliament 4 years
Good attempt. Keep Writing.
SURYA VIKRAM SINGH 4 years
sir please review
thank you
IAS Parliament 4 years
Good answer. Keep Writing.
yuvaraj 4 years
kindly review.. thanks
IAS Parliament 4 years
Good attempt. Keep Writing.
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