Having run through 74% of its labour budget under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) at the halfway point of the year, and expecting the demand to go up still further in a pandemic year, Bihar has asked the Centre for an additional six crore persondays of work to be added to its budget, State Rural Development (RD) Secretary Arvind Kumar Chaudhary told The Hindu .
However, despite the unprecedented increase in employment provided under the scheme this year, the demand is higher still, and at least one in five people who demanded work has not received it. According to workers and activists on the ground, local corruption and fraud means that many more people are being denied MGNREGA work than is reflected in the data, forcing migrants to return to the cities for work.
Bihar’s approved labour budget for 2020-21 is 18 crore persondays of work, but 13.3 crore persondays have already been used up, in providing work to almost 44 lakh people, according to official data. By the time the full figures for October are entered into the official system in a few weeks, the State may well have crossed the 14 crore persondays of work that were provided in the whole of the previous year.
Demand-driven scheme
“MGNREGA is a demand-driven scheme, and we expected demand to be higher due to the pandemic and the migrants who returned during the lockdown,” said Mr. Chaudhary. “We have already requested the Centre for an increase in the labour budget to 24 crore persondays... Peak demand season for MGNREGA in Bihar is after ‘Chhat Puja’ [festival celebrated on November 20] until the end of the year, so I expect to cross 20 to 23 crore this year.” In fact, this increase is despite the fact that MGNREGA worksites were shut for much of April, due to the lockdown, and work provision had also been disrupted by floods and elections, he said. More than 13 lakh new job cards were issued, mostly to returning migrants.
Nevertheless, a worrying 20% of the 54 lakh who demanded work were not provided work, even according to the official numbers.
Mr. Chaudhary dismissed the concern. Work offered was higher than work provided, he said. “If someone applies for MGNREGA work, but then gets a better offer within the next 15 days, they may not show up at the worksite”.
Workers’ version
Workers find the notion of refusing work laughable.
“In my village, we would work for 365 days if the work was provided. I would settle for 150 days of work a year, but this year, I have only been able to get 20 days of work so far,” says Manvi Devi, an MGNREGA worker from Rampur Kodarkatti village in Bihar’s Araria district. The sole earner in her family, she detailed the laborious, long-winded process of demanding work. Panchayat officers were unavailable, and even when chased down, were unwilling to register the demand for work, and issued a receipt to workers as envisaged under the law.
“Villagers who had come back from outside tried to register for job cards, but they were asked to pay ₹500 bribe and show a lot of documents. Many of them have gone back to Delhi, Surat, Haryana now because there is no work here,” she said.
In Jitendra’s village of Chitauria, in Katihar district, one major project to build a road near the river employed 250-300 MGNREGA workers for about a month in late May and June. “I got 30 days of work, but after that there has been nothing. Because of floods, agricultural work has been limited also, so we would be eager for MGNREGA work if we could get it, even though wages are low and payment is usually delayed”, he said.
He stated that corrupt sarpanches and mukhiyas who registered muster rolls with fake names, used machinery to complete work and then pocketed the funds meant for wages meant that the number of people who wanted work and didn’t get it was even higher than on paper. “The law says the government must register demand, give a job within15 days, pay unemployment allowance if work is not provided, pay wages within 15 days. But in Bihar, none of that happens. The government is crippling the law,” he added.
‘It’s farcical’
Ashish Ranjan, secretary of the Jan Jagran Shakti Sangathan, a trade union for unorganised sector workers, said, “The actual demand process is farcical. In reality, it is supply-driven. If the government is able to open worksites, wherever the government is able to supply work, they show it as the demand”. He agreed that the pandemic, and increased funding for MGNREGA had led to an increase in work but insisted that the real demand was at least 50% higher.
Mr. Chaudhary agreed that not enough had been done to provide work in the past but promised that the future would be different. “Generating demand is only one side of the equation. The supply side has been lacking. We have been augmenting supply side capabilities over the last few years. Next year, even without pandemic-driven demand, we are hoping to stay above 20 crore persondays,” he added.
