MGNREGA

MGNREGA (MAHATMA GANDHI NATIONAL RURAL EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE ACT,2005)

(picture courtesy :- jamshedpur.nic.in)

Launched in 2006. The mandate of the MGNREGA is to provide at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual labour work. It is a bottom up, people-centred, demand-driven, self selecting and rights based programme. The Act for the first time brought the role of the state as provider of livelihood within the reach of the beneficiaries themselves thereby helping in reducing the rural poverty.

CORE OBJECTIVES :-

1. Providing not less than 100 days of UNSKILLED MANUAL WORK as guaranteed employment in a financial year to every household in rural areas as per demand, resulting in creation of productive assets of prescribed quality and durability.

2. Strengthening the livelihood resources

3.  Proactively ensuring social inclusion

4. Strengthening PANCHAYATI RAJ INSTITUTIONS

ANALYSIS OF MGNREGA 1.0 

1. JOB CREATION: reduced migration to great extent and provided with over 1980 crore person-days have been generated in the programme

2. BENEFITS FOR WEAKER SECTION : the percentage of SC = 20% and ST = 17% consistently rising too.

3. WOMEN EMPOWERMENT: it has changed the nature of rural labour market. it gave an opportunity to rural households to earn minimum income by getting job cards under this scheme.

4. BROADENED THE OCCUPATIONAL CHOICES FOR AGRICULTURAL SECTOR 

MGNREGA 2.0 :-

It is based on the recommendation of a task force under the chairmanship of MIHIR SHAH which was assigned the task to look into the lacunas and redraft rules and guidelines for more effective and efficient management of the programme. The reforms were very important to meet the demands of works were dipping consistently and there was widespread corruption in the implementation. 30 new works have been added which were earlier confined to 8 types of works only. The programme now includes every source of rural livelihood in every agro-ecological zone.

RECENT TALKS:

The country is facing various crisis and one of the major is the economic crisis due to the COVID 19 which has greatly affected the labour class and unskilled people. SINCE this programme has been a boon for the country and the labour section especially there is  great demand by economists and social activists of various states that the minimum days guaranteed under this should increase from 15o to 200 days which were last updated in the second version of MGNREGA.

SUGGESTIONS and PERSONAL OPINION :

1. I personally think that this programme should should be reformed again and updated with addition of more days under it.

2. More focus of the programme should be on the development of quality of assets with constant increase in quantity of integrating more people under it.

3. Its the era of digitisation, funds allocation, leakage will be minimised if the programme is completely digititalized.

REFERENCES:-

1. MADE EASY IAS NOTES

2. THE HINDU

-Abheet Chawla (Hunter)