Union Budget 2022-23: In demand, but MGNREGS gets no hike

The scheme guarantees 100 days of wage employment in a financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. It has emerged as one of the key safety nets for the poor and migrant workers who were among the worst hit by the pandemic.

The Rs 73,000 crore figure is the same as the MGNREGS budget estimates (BE), but lower than the revised estimates (RE) of Rs 98,000 crore  for the current fiscal year (2021-22), and the actual expenditure of Rs 1,11,170 crore during 2020-21.

On Tuesday, MGNREGS was not          mentioned in Finance Minister Sitharaman’s 90-minute Union Budget speech in the Lok Sabha. So far, the minister has referred to MGNREGS once in her budgetary speeches — in 2020 — since she took over the post in 2019.

According to the Economic Survey 2021-22, the demand for work under MGNREGS is still higher than pre-pandemic levels — indicating that employment levels, especially for the blue collar workers, may be far from normal despite economic recovery.

“An analysis of the latest data on demand for work under MGNREGS suggests the following trends in the rural labour market: (i) MGNREGS employment peaked during the nation-wide lockdown in 2020 (ii) the demand for MGNREGS work has stabilized after the second Covid wave; (iii) aggregate MGNREGS employment is still higher than pre-pandemic level…” said the survey.

According to the latest data available on the NREGS portal, 6.74 crore households (9.75 crore individuals) availed the rural job guarantee scheme and 301.09 crore persondays have been generated till February 1 in the current financial year.  In the last financial year, 389.1 crore persondays were generated, and 7.55 crore households (11.19 crore individuals) availed the scheme.