Utility of providing work to the rural poor under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) could probably be best established, at the place where it was launched 14 years ago by creating a record 6,18,288 person days on a single day.
COVID-19 exposed the fragile rural economy in the arid Anantapur district with second lowest average annual rainfall of 550 mm in the country and ground reality check by The Hindu showed that if this scheme were not implemented pro-actively with a renewed vigour by the district administration, hunger deaths could have become a reality.
E. Sivaiah, a curry leaves farmer of Muchukota village in Peddapappur mandal, is crestfallen as lush green crop in 1.5 acres, that should have earned him ₹ 1 lakh in three months, is a ‘no touch’ zone for this season as COVID-19 led to price of this spicy leaf to fall from ₹10 a kg to ₹1 a kg and even at that price there is none to buy, despite tall claims of the Horticulture Department of coming to the growers’ rescue during two months of lockdown.
Sivaiah, who usually supervises about a dozen of farm labourers plucking leaves every alternate day or twice in a week, is today engaged in shallow trenching works on the revenue forest land in his own village earning ₹800 to ₹1,000 a week, which keeps the family afloat and away from hunger with the State government’s quota of subsidised rice.
He now understands the importance of the scheme formally launched on February 2, 2016 at Bandlapalli in neighbouring Narpala mandal and thanks the government for coming to his rescue.
Special focus
District Collector Gandham Chandrudu, explaining the special focus put on the NREGS, said as of June 17, ₹251.67 crore was spent from April 1 in disbursing the wages to the people engaged in various works. It was only next to Vizianagaram, which had spent ₹365 crore providing 7,77,484 person days per day.
While for the entire last fiscal year, 1.82 crore person days were created, this financial year the target is three crore person days and out of that 1.07 crore has already been achieved and wages disbursed till June 13, with no pending bills.
About 30,000 of distressed migrants from various States and districts came back during or after the lockdown period pushing the demand for work. “Our aim is to make Anantapur a distress-migration-free district at the earliest,” said Mr. Chandrudu. The maximum person days created last fiscal was a little above 2.5 lakh per day.
Increase in job cards
The number of job cards also increased by 50,000 from 5.05 lakh last fiscal to 5.53 lakh and some of the inactive ones (28,367) have been reactivated with job seekers touching a peak of 8.76 lakh this fiscal.