The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), launched to provide at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work, has seen a dip in jobs generated since July 2019. This is a significant decrease from the previous year of 2018.
Falling Numbers
There has been a considerable reduction in the number of households provided with work out of the total number that had registered their demand for work with the gram panchayat authorities. For the financial year of 2018-19, about 5.88 crore households registered their requirement for work, and an astounding 5.27 crore were provided with work. However, 2019 saw a dip in person-days of employment provision, particularly obvious post-July. Prior to July 2019, the work provided actually exceeded the corresponding levels for 2018.
The Onset of Monsoon and its Impact
The decrease in MGNREGA employment following July can largely be attributed to the arrival of the southwest monsoon. The gap between the number of households demanding work under MGNREGA and the number which was provided work reached its peak in 2019-20, implying that even when the demand dropped, the work supply decreased even more dramatically.
Insufficient Funding
The monetary cost of providing a single day’s work to an individual was averaged at ₹249.86 for the year 2019-20. For approximately 270.21 crore people, the budgetary allocation for MGNREGA amounted to ₹67,514.67 crore. However, the actual budgetary allocation was merely ₹60,000 crore, which also encompassed provisions for material and administrative expenses. To add to the complication, as of December 24, 2019, ₹55,829.62 crore had already been spent.
| Year | Average Cost per Day | Number of People | MGNREGA Budget | Budgetary Allocation | Amount Spent by Dec 24, 2019 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-2020 | ₹249.86 | 270.21 crore | ₹67,514.67 crore | ₹60,000 crore | ₹55,829.62 crore |
Increasing Work Days and Shortage of Resource
On top of the financial issue, the Centre also decided to increase its original plan of providing 260 crore person-days of work for 2019-20 to a much higher 316.73 crore person-days. This decision was made in response to the idea of increasing the number of days of work per household under the MGNREGA from 100 to 150 in flood-affected districts of several states such as Karnataka.
Similar Issues Faced by Other Schemes
The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) followed a similar story. In the first instalment period (December 2018 to March 2019), 8.05 crore farmers were covered, with each farmer receiving ₹2,000. However, these numbers fell to 7.43 crore in the second instalment (April-July 2019) and further dropped to 5.91 crore in the third (August-November).
The PM Awas Yojana-Gramin scheme also experienced a downfall in the number of rural houses built: a decrease from 47.33 lakh in 2018-19 to a mere 7.2 lakh in 2019-20.
Last Modified: February 6, 2024