Comments
The rural job guarantee scheme – MGNREGA – whose decade-long existence was celebrated by the Centre on Tuesday, is starving for funds to even see it through the next two months, said social activists.
“There were positive signs that (Finance Minister) Arun Jaitley would announce the release of at least Rs 3,000 crore – the balance of the amount promised in his Budget speech, and asked for in a letter by the Minister of Rural Development on December 30, 2015. However, this announcement was not made, and today the MGNREGA faces a negative balance of funds in 14 States, including Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Odisha, Sikkim and Uttar Pradesh,” said a statement by People’s Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG), signed by Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey and Annie Raja.
The Finance Minister had promised in his Budget speech in February 2015 an additional Rs 5,000 crore. “…Even though the funds with the MoRD have finished, only Rs 2,000 crores of the Rs 5,000 crores have been released,” PAEG added.
Stating that the Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) “cannot even afford temporary shortages,” the statement said the scheme had only just begun to recover from four years of fund starvation, culminating in a “disastrous year in 2014-15.”
A total of 57 per cent of MGNREGA workers are women, and close to half are from Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe households.
“If budgetary allocations in UPA II and the NDA had only kept pace with real expenditure levels from 2010, the programme would have had a real opportunity to expand in scope, reach, and effect,” it said, adding that actual expenditure in MGNREGA in 2010-11 was Rs 39,377 crore. The inflation rate as per CPI-RL (Consumer Price Index - Rural Labourers) has been: 9.9 per cent in 2010-11, 8.3 per cent in 2011-12, 10.1 per cent in 2012-13, 11.6 per cent in 2013-14 and 6.7 per cent in 2014-15.
“Hence, in subsequent years, if the overall expenditure in MGNREGA had been maintained at the same level as in 2010-11 (taking into account inflation on the basis of CPI-RL), the Budget outlay for MGNREGA in 2015-16 should have been Rs. 61,445 crore.” PAEG added.
Comments
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.