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MGNREGA: Today and tomorrow -Sunita Narain

-Down to Earth

The programme can provide a safety net for the poor, not just in COVID-19 times, but for times to come

In these darkest days of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) — when jobs and economies have collapsed — 56 million households got work in the past three months and these jobs provided relief. This was under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which perhaps is the largest social net scheme in the world.

Down To Earth reporters, who travelled to different regions of the country, found there was a surge for employment and in many places, the most skilled and educated turned to this programme. It effectively put a floor to poverty — people got jobs, though unskilled and manual — but it gave them money, albeit only a daily wage, and this provided them the ability to buy food to feed their families.

The question is how this massive job creation programme can be worked so that the assets created are durable? The programme is providing relief today, but how can it ensure the basis of livelihood security in the future? This is where our focus needs to be.

Under this scheme, from April to June, when virus crisis was hitting hard and people were returning to their villages — over 600,000 water-related structures were built or repaired. In other words, people were given employment close to their homes to dig ponds or build check-dams or repair the village tank that was not functional. In the rains that have followed, these water-conservation measures would have played a big role to recharge groundwater and mitigate floods — each pond or tank is the sponge that holds the floodwater for the coming dry period.

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