The Ministry of Rural Development has been implementing ‘The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005’, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (Mahatma Gandhi NREGS) is a demand driven wage employment programme which provide for the enhancement of livelihood security of the households in rural areas of the country by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in every financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. The scheme therefore provides guaranteed wage employment in every financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.
Mahatma Gandhi NREGS is a gender-neutral scheme which promotes participation of women by providing wage parity with men, provision of separate schedule of rates of wages for women. Under MGNREGS direct benefit transfer (DBT), all payments to the workers are to be credited into their bank accounts. The crediting of payments is done using the Aadhaar number of the beneficiary with which the bank account is linked. The major benefit of the Aadhaar Based Payment System (ABPS) conversion in MGNREGA is to minimise the rejection of transactions due to the frequent changing of accounts.
Various community assets have been revived due to MGNREGA. But regular consultation with the local stakeholders is required to include local area-specific works as per the local needs. According to the data from the Ministry of Rural Development on October 27, rural employment under MGNREGS witnessed a rapid increase in the last ten years with 2,923 crore person days generated between FY 2014-15 to FY 2024-25. This is a 76 per cent increase in the last decade, from 1,660 crore generated between FY 2006-07 to FY 2013-14. During the FY 2013-14, the budget allocation was Rs 33,000 crore only at BE (Budget Estimates) stage which is Rs 86,000 crore during the current FY 2024-25, which is the highest since inception.
Since only the poor and most needy sought work under the Mahatma Gandhi NREGA, it was an accurate self-targeting scheme, with a major proportion of the beneficiaries belonging to marginalised communities. MGNREGA has had a multiplier effect on the rural economy, with the additional purchasing power generated from it spent on items produced in the rural economy. But there is need for quality checks of infrastructure created under the MGNREGA through social audit in order to also prevent the financial misappropriation in wages and procedural deviations. Most states have failed to disburse wages within 15 days as mandated by MGNREGA. It is workers who end up bearing the brunt of such lapses. In addition, workers are not compensated for a delay in payment of wages.
