Flagging the continuous rise of funds under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the Parliamentray Standing Committee on Rural Development has asked the government to ensure that ‘agreed to labour budget’ is made keeping in view expenditure of previous years.

The committee, headed by Prataprao Jadhav, wondered how the Budget Estimate (BE) of a year could be lower than previous year’s expenses. “Moreover, it is also quite perplexing as to the rationale behind keeping the BE for 2021-22 at ₹73,000 crore while in the previous financial year, the expenditure was to the tune of ₹1,11,170.86 crore,” the report said.

The panel, which placed its report on MGNREGA in the Parliament on Tuesday, said: “Budgetary allocation of a scheme of such enormous magnitude should be done in a more pragmatic manner so that there is no dearth of funds in mid-year and flow of funds for payment of wages, material share, etc. is maintained seamlessly.”

For 2022-23, the government has allocated ₹73,000 crore for the scheme, same as was in BE of 2021-22. However it is lower than the revised estimate (RE) of ₹98,000 crore for the current fiscal.

The committee highlighted that during the last 4-5 years, the BE has seen a substantial hike at the RE stage. In the financial year 2018-19, the allocation was hiked from ₹55,000 crore (BE) to ₹61,830.09 crore (RE), from ₹60,000 crore to ₹71,001.81 crore in 2019-20, from ₹61,500 crore to ₹1,11,500 crore in 2020-21.

“Thus, the committee are of the view that the scheme is definitely showing an increase in demand as elicited by the ever increasing budgetary demand,” it said.

Delay in funds release

Strongly criticising the approach of the Centre in blaming States for the delay in release of funds, the panel said: “The committee were bemused on the approach exhibited by the nodal agency of the scheme, i.e. Department of Rural Development in highlighting only the States’ loopholes. This is completely unacceptable and the committee find the ‘blame-game’ unpalatable.

“The ‘need of the hour’ in a federal form of government should not be limited to merely finger pointing at each other at the cost of detriment to a public welfare scheme, rather working in unison with the common goal of upliftment of the quality of lives of rural masses. In this context, the committee vehemently recommend the Department of Rural Development to entail all possible measures in bringing all the shareholders on a common platform and coerce the State governments to abide with the statutory provision of the MGNREGA Act in ‘letter and spirit’ so that the beneficiaries fate do not keep hanging around the bureaucratic procedures.”

The committee said that one of the impediments obstructing the smooth and unhindered flow of funds is that of non-completion of requisite procedural formalities by the State governments within the stipulated time-frame. Non-updation of muster roll within three days of completion of the work or delay in the submission of documents for release of wages/skilled/material shared by the States along with delay in release of States’ share of 25 per cent material costs are also factors responsible for the delay in release of funds, it said.

Uniform wages

Suggesting the government to consider raising the number of guaranteed working days under MGNREGA to 150 days from the current 100 days, the panel has also recommended uniform wages across the country to remove disparity among states.

Wage rates fluctuate from ₹193/day to ₹318/day across the different States. It has also reiterated its stand to link wages to Consumer Price Index-Rural (CPI-R) in place of Consumer Price Index-Agricultural Labour (CPI-AL).

The ministry informed that though it accepted the recommendation of the Nagesh Singh Committee on wage rate revision that had recommended for using CPI-R, it has decided to continue with the existing index CPI-AL following a meeting with Ministry of Statistics and Employment.