Parliamentary Panel Recommendations On MGNREGA

Table of Contents

What is MGNREGA?

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is an Indian law enacted on August 25, 2005.
The MGNREGA provides a legal guarantee for 100 days of employment in every financial year to adult members of any rural household willing to do public work-related unskilled manual work at the statutory minimum wage.
The Ministry of Rural Development (MRD), Govt of India is monitoring the entire implementation of this scheme in association with state governments.

Lower Budegtary allocation
- 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.
- It is 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 2022-23 budgetary allocation for MGNREGA was maintained at the same ₹73,000 crore level, despite the fact that the previous year’s revised estimates were 25% higher at ₹98,000 crore.
- The scheme’s financial statement for 2021-22 already shows a negative net balance of ₹15,683 crore.

Delay in release of funds
- The report slammed the “inordinate delays” in wage payments and urged the Department of rural development to “pull up its socks” and take all measures to wipe out the pending wage liabilities of almost ₹2364 crore.
- Report reads
  - “There may be plethora of reasons causing delay in the payment of wages, but none of the reason can be sufficient enough to justify this blatant nonadherence to the statutory provision of the Act”.

No Unemployment allowance
- The Committee also said that it was “appalled at the blatant violation of the provision of unemployment allowance”.
- The committee note that no money had been paid out in the current year until November 5 2021, while payments for the last two years were only ₹3000 and ₹12,000 in total.
- Theunemployment allowance is mandatory for all applicants who are not given work within 15 days of their seeking employment.

Other Issues
- The committee also highlighted
  - Lack of effective coordination between centre & states over release of funds
  - Non completion of requisite procedures within stipulated time frame
  - Non updating of muster rolls withing three days of completion of work
  - Delay in states paper work over release of funds