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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | MGNREGA, once world's largest source of rural livelihood, now a tale of decay and digital delay -Rashme Sehgal

MGNREGA, once world's largest source of rural livelihood, now a tale of decay and digital delay -Rashme Sehgal

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published Published on Sep 22, 2017   modified Modified on Sep 22, 2017
-Firstpost.com

Have women living in rural India benefitted from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Scheme (MGNREGA)? MNREGA was introduced in 2006 and has emerged as the largest programme in the world for providing employment to the rural poor.

While there is no doubt that MNREGA in a short span of ten years did help generate 20 billion person-days of employment benefitting 276 million workers from which more than half were women. Women admit that in the initial years, it did help provide employment up to almost 60 days per household in 2009-10 but the numbers have plummeted to 30-40 days per household in 2014-15 and the graph is only declining.

Middle-aged Mandu from Araria district of Bihar expresses this popular sentiment when she said, "Today I consider myself lucky if I can get 30 days of employment in a year. Unfortunately, since payments are being delayed by six months and more, the men have no choice but to migrate to larger cities in search of work."

Sunburnt and wearing a dark green sari, Mandu who is the mother of three girls and two boys, said, "At present all work in MNREGA has been stopped in our district because of the floods in our state. Being a BPL card holder, I was given five kilos of rice by the state government. My biggest complaint is that when I ask the village mukhiya (chief) for work, he prefers to give it to people of his own caste and community."

Mandu has been associated with MNREGA from 2009. She believes that work under this scheme definitely helped in the creation of assets for the village. "We helped build roads, ponds and toilets. In the initial years, it stopped menfolk from migrating to larger town since men preferred to stay back and work from their homes. Now, the entire village has emptied out and there are no men folk left, only young boys and old men," said Mandu.

Ram Beti of Alipur village in Sitapur district of Uttar Pradesh has been associated with MGREGA from 2006. Ram Beti is extremely upset by the new technological initiatives in which their payments have been linked to bank accounts and Aadhar cards.

"Many of us are illiterate and we do daily mazdoori (labour). Hamare haath ghiste rahte hain(We work with our bare hands). So we believe our fingerprints can and do change. Using them to provide proof of our identity is a mistake because if there is the slightest change in our thumb or fingerprint, these do not tally with our earlier thumb impressions," said Ram Beti.

Her other complaint relates to internet connectivity. "Six times out of ten, when I reach the bank, they are facing a connectivity issue. There are seven members in my family, two boys, two girls, and my aged father-in-law and I have all the household responsibilities on my shoulders. I leave my work and go to the bank and there I am told, I will have to come some other time," she said.

Ram Beti believes the drive towards over-centralisation of MNREGA has worked against the workers. "The district and village panchayats are helpless since all decisions emanate from Delhi. Earlier, if we faced problems, they would be resolved at the local level. Now, in the name of corruption, they have only succeeded in creating greater harassment for us," she said.

She cites several examples of how villagers in her own district have had their Aadhar numbers wrongly entered in the bank and although they have worked in the MGREGA programme, their money has been wrongly transferred into another workers account.

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Firstpost.com, 20 September, 2017, http://www.firstpost.com/india/mgnrega-once-worlds-largest-source-of-rural-livelihood-now-a-tale-of-decay-and-digital-delay-4062669.html


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