After paying out the current fiscal year’s liabilities, the funds allocated to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MG-NREGS) for 2022-23 would suffice to provide an average of just 16-21 days of job to a rural household in the year year against the scheme’s mandate of 100 days’ work annually, two organisations working on the scheme have estimated.
The government has allocated Rs 73,000 crore for the scheme in the Budget for 2022-23. This is 25% less than the revised estimate (RE) of Rs 98,000 crore for 2021-22.
People’s Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG) estimated that FY22 would end with pending liabilities of over Rs 21,000 crore under MG-NREGS. It said 6.75 crore households had worked under the scheme as of February 1, 2022. Considering average cost per day per person going up to Rs 371 from Rs 289.12 so far in the current fiscal, it said an average of 20.76 person days of work can be provided to the same number of households next fiscal.
NREGA Sangharsh Morcha (NSM) said, “Out of the budgetary allocation for 2022-23, about Rs 18,350 crore are pending liabilities from previous years. Therefore, only about Rs 54,650 crore is available for next year. If the government wants to provide legal guarantee of work to all the active job card holding households, which is 9.94 crore, then it will only be able to provide some 16 days at per person per day average cost of Rs 334.”
The difference in the estimates among the two organisations is because the manner of arriving at the estimation used by two are different. In a joint statement, both the organisations, however, said, “As on January 31, the net balance of NREGA funds was at a deficit of Rs 15,190 crore. Wage payments to the value of Rs 3,273 crores, involving around two crore wage transactions, had been delayed. Almost 11% of households that demanded work under NREGA were not provided employment under the Act. Less than 5% of households had been employed for 100 days or more.”
They also said the amount of compensation owed to workers for delayed wage payment and the value of rejected transactions were also significant, at Rs 11.78 crore and Rs 816.63 crore respectively.
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