MGNREGA: Provisions, Issues & Reforms Required

Context (TH): Drones will be used to monitor both the progress and quality of assets produced under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA).

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (MGNREGA)

MGNREGA is a social security scheme guaranteeing 100 days of work to any rural household willing to do public work-related unskilled manual work at the statutory minimum wage.
The Ministry of Rural Development (MRD) is monitoring the entire implementation of this scheme in association with state governments.
The wages are revised according to the Consumer Price Index-Agricultural Labourers (CPI-AL).
The act obligates the state to give rural households work on demand.
The applicant becomes eligible for an unemployment allowance if such employment is not provided within 15 days of registration.
The employment will be provided within a radius of 5 km. If it is >5 km, an extra wage will be paid.
Under the act, priority shall be given to women, and at least one-third of the beneficiaries shall be women who have registered and requested work.
All work sites should have crèches, drinking water and first aid facilities.
Social Audit must be done by the Gram Sabha.

In Odisha, the job seekers under MGNREGA in the twenty migration-prone blocks will be paid additional wages over and above the notified wage rate under MGNREGA.
The Odisha government provided additional 200 days of employment under MGNREGA in twenty migration-prone blocks of four districts.

100% of the unskilled labour cost and 75% of the material cost (including wages of skilled and semi-skilled workers) of the programme is borne by the Centre.
Under the MGNREGS, wages of unskilled workers must be paid within 15 days; if there is a delay, the Centre has to compensate them.

The Act provides for the wage and material costs to be in the proportion of 60:40.
For instance, if a project costs Rs. 100, the wage expenditure should be at least Rs. 60, and the expenditure on materials should be Rs. 40.
It should be ensured that the total material cost (including wages of skilled and semi-skilled workers and mates) of all works in the Annual Shelf of Projects should not exceed 40%.
However, over 80% of the scheme’s funds have been used for wage payments in several labour-rich states.

Mates are the site supervisors under MGNREGA.
They are the frontline supervisors of the programme and are listed as semi-skilled workers because of the specialist nature of their job.
Their wages come from the “material component“, 60% of which the Union government pays.
Due to their payment delays, most mates started listing themselves as unskilled workers.

MGNREGA was launched as a poverty alleviation instrument for the rural region, providing them with a safety net through guaranteed work and wages.
But now it is felt that States like UP and Bihar, with a higher poverty level, haven’t been able to utilise the scheme optimally.

The Central government has constituted a committee to review the implementation of the MGNREGS, primarily to assess the programme’s efficacy as a poverty alleviation tool.
Former Rural Development secretary Amarjeet Sinha heads the committee.
The committee will also study the factors behind the demand for MGNREGA work, expenditure trends and inter-State variations, etc.

Section 27 of the MGNREGA empowers the Centre to give directions to the State for the effective implementation of the Act.
The Union Rural Development Ministry has served notice on the Telangana government asking it to return 151.9 crore spent under the MGNREGS on the construction of platforms for drying fish and grain, which is not permitted under the scheme.

On the lines of MGNREGA, an urban employment guarantee scheme is rolled out in Rajasthan.

To stop any bogus attendance of workers, the Centre has made the attendance of workers through a mobile application with time-stamped and geo-tagged photographs mandatory.
However, in most cases, the employees’ families are averse to providing a phone to women. Hence, many women have dropped out of MGNREGS.