First time in four years, NREGS jobs in Jan-Feb below pre-Covid level

While an email seeking a response from the Ministry of Rural Development remained unanswered, economists and statisticians The Indian Express spoke with said there could be multiple reasons for the drop. One reason is many migrants who returned to their villages during the pandemic have gone back to work. Two, it is likely states are delaying demand for work due to lack of adequate funds. Activists working on the ground also cite the changes in attendance and payment systems that could have forced persons to remain without work over the last two months.

The drop, incidentally, also coincides with the introduction of several changes related to the scheme’s implementation. (Express)

The demand for work under NREGS had jumped following a nationwide lockdown in March 2020 due to the outbreak of Covid-19. It peaked in June 2020 when a little over 64 crore person-days were generated under the scheme. Since then, the monthly figure of person-days generated under the scheme has remained higher than the pre-Covid level (financial year 2019-20).

However, since January, this year, the figure of person-days generated has been lower than the pre-Covid levels. Similarly, the number of households availing the job guarantee scheme has reduced. In February, 2023, 1.67 crore households availed the scheme, which is lower than that in February 2022 (2.02 crore), February 2021 (2.28 crore) and February 2020 (1.87 crore).

The drop, incidentally, also coincides with the introduction of several changes related to the scheme’s implementation. For instance, the Ministry of Rural Development had made it mandatory to mark attendance through the National Mobile Monitoring System App (NMMS) with effect from January 1, 2023. Workers are also required to get two time-stamped and geotagged photographs uploaded on the scheme’s portal.

While the ministry argues the new system is aimed at increasing citizen oversight of the programme and ease of governance, civil society activists allege this is creating impediments in the scheme’s implementation.

Besides the new attendance system, the ministry had also made it mandatory from February the use of the Aadhar-Based Payment System (ABPS) for depositing wages of workers. This move has been criticised by civil society activists, who have been demanding a roll back of the new attendance and payment systems. While the ministry has now decided to have a “mixed model” for payment routes till March 31, 2023, where workers under the rural job guarantee scheme can be paid through the ABPS as well as National Automated Clearing House (NACH), the order on the NMMS attendance stands.

Nikhil Dey, founder member of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, said the two measures caused disruption and almost a 30 per cent crash in the employment figures. “The government has succeeded in bringing these figures down to below pre-Covid levels by stopping payments due to crores of workers on the basis of not qualifying to be paid through the Aadhar-Based Payment System. The relaxation of the requirement till March 31 is too little to ease disruption, and the deadline runs out before the relaxation can provide any substantive relief. Many states have been allocated roughly half the labour budget they spent this financial year,” Dey claimed.