From illegal deletion of 1 crore job cards, to manipulation of the Management Information System, wilful delays in payment of wages, wage suppression, and under-funding of the programme, the Central government is trying its best to undermine and “finish off” the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, claimed civil society activists in Delhi on Tuesday.
Citing recent media reports, Nikhil Dey of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) said: “There is still no consolidated list of job cards that have been deleted. We don’t know what methodology was adopted for this verification drive, and no reason has been offered for terming a job card ‘fake’.”
According to the MGNREGA, no job card can be cancelled for reasons such as ‘unwilling to work’. “Yet the records at gram panchayats show that the most frequently cited reason for deletion of job cards was ‘unwilling to work’. This is a violation of the Ministry of Rural Development’s own guidelines,” Mr. Dey said.
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‘Why no action?’
“If it is true that 1 crore job cards were found to be fake, how come no criminal action has been taken against even a single government officer for perpetrating the fraud,” asked Ankita Agarwal, an independent researcher on labour rights.
“Many job cards that could not be linked to Aadhar have been summarily deleted, so that the bureaucracy could claim to have met the statistical target of 100% Aadhar seeding of job cards,” she added.
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“It is very clear that the government does not want to spend money on MGNREGA,” said Jayati Ghosh, a professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University. “That’s why it has been under-funding the programme, as reflected in the inadequate funds allotted for it. While the required budget for financial year 2017-18 was ₹79,898 crore, the government allocated only ₹48,000 crore, which is barely 53% of what is required to meet the States’ projection of demand for work under MGNREGA.”
Workers registered with MGNREGS are entitled to compensation for delay in payment of wages. But the government is tweaking the MIS so that the delays are either hidden or not captured, the activists said.
Wage rates
“Not paying workers for work done is tantamount to forced labour or slavery,” pointed out Kamayani Swami of the MGNREGA Central Employment Guarantee Council.
“The Central government’s MGNREGA wage rates continue to be below the State’s minimum wage rate for several States,” she said.