New Delhi: The NREGA Sangharsh Morcha, a national collective of trade unions, workers platforms and organisations, has written an open letter to the Ministry of Rural Development, refuting the ministry’s recent claims on the status of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
In response to queries sent by IndiaSpend on the reduced budget for the scheme and its implications, the MoRD made the following claims:
1. There is no unmet work demand under the scheme.
2. This year’s Budget allocation for the scheme – at Rs 60,000 crore – is adequate, since supplementary funds are made available later in the year.
3. There is no delay in wage payments.
4. The National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS) app works smoothly and without glitch, with issues being resolved in real time.
All of these claims, the NREGA Sangharsh Morcha has said in its letter, do not match the ground realities.
On work demand, the organisation has said:
“What passes for “work demand” in NREGA’s Management and Information System (MIS) can by no means be interpreted as an indicator of the full demand for work. It is only a record of formal requests that may or may not have been submitted by workers themselves. More often, these digital requests are just a formality fulfilled by the implementing agency or middlemen. Independent surveys show that the real demand for work is much large.”
Many households, the letter says, do not know how to apply for more work, and that’s why all demand is not visible.
The Budget allocation is far from adequate, the letter continues, and the ministry is “deceiving” people by claiming that it is:
“It [the ministry] knows very well that the supplementary allocation proves inadequate every year and leads to wage arrears being carried over to the next financial year (more than Rs 10,000 crore this year). Meanwhile wage payments are delayed and NREGA works are often held up.”
Also read: Chart: Budget 2023’s NREGA Allocation Is Lower Than All Previous Modi 2.0 Years
Wage payments are regularly delayed, the letter continues, and the ministry’s response is worded in a way that obfuscates the truth:
“The Ministry is careful to mention that payments are only “generated” within 15 days in most cases, but it knows very well that wage payments are routinely delayed after the generation of payment orders. Many recent studies show that payment delays remain the norm rather than exception.”
That the NMMS app works smoothly is contradicted by the NREGA Sangharsh Morcha’s observations in all the states where it works, the letter continues:
“Wherever we have a presence (Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and other states), we observe that the mandatory imposition of this App has caused havoc. In many areas, there have been demonstrations of NREGA workers against it. We have also circulated many testimonies of NMMS-related problems on social media (e.g. here, here and here). The claim that “no major issue has been reported in its implementation” is simply false and contradicts the Ministry’s own admission that damage-control modifications have been made in response to requests from state governments.”
The Morcha has launched a protest at Jantar Mantar, demanding that the app-based system be scrapped and adequate funding be made available for the programme.
Read the full text of the letter below.
Open Letter to MoRD, NREGA Sangharsh Morcha (English) by The Wire on Scribd