Workers seek timely payments, more workdays under rural jobs scheme

 The demand for work under MGNREGS was the highest ever in 2020 after migrants returned to villages following the national lockdown

Prem Lal, 39, has had a horrid time since the national lockdown in 2020. Soon after the announcement in March, like many stranded migrant workers, he made the arduous journey back home. He walked nearly 1,200 km from Pune, where he worked as a painter, to his village in Banda district of Uttar Pradesh's economically deprived Bundelkhand region. Since then he has found a few weeks of wage employment under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the national rural jobs program.

"If work was available for the most part of the year under schemes like MGNREGS then I wouldn't venture out to other cities," said Lal. Like him, Baba Deen, 45, works under MGNREGS in the adjoining district of Panna which falls in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh. Demand for work increased "heavily" when people returned home after the lockdown in March "but not all of them were able to find employment", he said.

Enacted in 2006, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) aims to provide at least 100 days of unskilled wage employment to adult members of a rural household and is meant to be a lifeline for the rural poor--nearly 147 million active workers--during times of economic distress and natural calamities.

Even as the number of people seeking work in 2020-21 increased to 133 million, the highest ever, the government allocated 35% fewer funds for the program in 2021-22 and is unwilling to provide more than 100 days of work. Workers, however, said they continued to face issues such as payment delays and inadequate availability of work.