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Rural job rush after slowdown -Basant Kumar Mohanty

-The Telegraph

New Delhi: The demand for work under the rural job scheme has risen this financial year, with economists and social activists attributing it to the economic slowdown and the spectre of a drought in south India.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme has already generated 119 crore persondays in the first five months of the financial year, data on the rural development ministry's website show. This is 55 per cent of the estimated 215 crore persondays for this year and more than half of last year's actual figure of 236 crore persondays.

The average of figures filed in the Rajya Sabha suggests that only 105 crore persondays - 14 crore fewer than that this year - were generated for the corresponding period a year ago.

The ministry had itself estimated a rise in the number of workers under the scheme, from last fiscal year's projected 6.57 crore workers to 7 crore this year.

Sources said the spurt in demand had prompted the ministry to ask the finance ministry for additional resources.

A professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University suggested that an overall slowdown in the economy could be fuelling the rising demand for the scheme, which guarantees up to 100 days of unskilled employment to every household in rural India.

"There's evidence of a slowdown in the economy, particularly the agriculture sector," the professor said.

Social activist Nikhil Dey suggested an additional reason, saying drought conditions were emerging in several districts in southern India.

Late last month, the Central Statistics Office had reported that economic growth had sunk to a three-year low at 5.7 per cent.

Of the Rs 48,000 crore allocated for the job scheme in the budget, the rural development ministry has already released nearly Rs 35,000 crore to the states, which includes Rs 11,000 crore towards the clearance of arrears from last year. Of this, last year's wage dues accounted for Rs 1,400 crore.

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