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Journalism of Courage
Demand for work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) has seen a steady decline in the last five years since its post-COVID peak. However, demand for work unde rthe scheme remains higher than pre-COVID days.
In the fiscal year 2020-21 (the year when COVID led to the lockdown), 8.53 crore households had made demands for work under the scheme through local gram panchayats.
After lockdown, this demand for work saw a steady dip even though the economy reflected a positive outlook. For the fiscal year 2021-22, it dipped to 8.05 crore.
According to 2024-25 data from the MGNREGA website till March 17, between 2022-23, the demand for jobs by households under the central scheme was 6.90 crore, while in 2023-24 it was 6.51 crore, and in 2024-25 the figure was 6.26 crore.
In 2020-21,when the national economy came to a standstill due to the nationwide Covid induced lockdown, MGNREGA came to the rescue in rural heartlands, where lakhs of migrants, who had migrated back home to their villages from urban areas, found relief in the scheme that guaranteed 100 days of work. During this time, the central government had increased the number of eligible days that applicants could work for.
But as the graph here shows, the demand for work has taken a hit post lockdown. “This is only natural as many rural labourers returned to urban areas to their previous workplaces, so the demand for work had dipped,” said a central government employee. Surveys done by the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA) provided an indirect hint to this observation. In its monthly surveys of industries, MCCIA saw that small and medium sectors in Pune and the surrounding regions were optimistic about their growth prospectives.
“The workers in question are mostly semi-skilled or unskilled workers who form the bulk of the class 4 workforce, so they are now back as the demand for work has gone up,” said another government officer.
Not withstanding the dip, the demand for jobs is however higher than pre-COVID days. Just a year before the pandemic, the total work demand was 5.88 crore.
Ajit Nawale, state secretary of the CPI(MP) pointed out that while urban jobs are back, the underlying rural distress is far from over. “As figures show, demand for jobs under the Employment Guarantee Scheme is still high. Lower than expected income from the farm sector has pushed many farmers to seek for additional income under the scheme,” he said. Nawale said many small farmers have stopped taking a second crop and instead migrated to such jobs. “Overall, the distress in the farm sector is reflected in the numbers,” he said.
