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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Social activists caution Government not to ignore its legal responsibility & use budget cuts to dilute the MGNREGA

Social activists caution Government not to ignore its legal responsibility & use budget cuts to dilute the MGNREGA

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published Published on Feb 2, 2015   modified Modified on Feb 2, 2015
-Press Release of People's Action for Employment Guarantee

New Delhi: Monday marks the 9th anniversary of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The Act is unique to India and is known across the world as not only one of the most innovative social security measures but also an entitlement guaranteed by law passed unanimously by both houses of parliament. Since its inception, 1 in 3 households in rural India have worked under the MGNREGA. In the last year various attempts have been made to dilute, modify and destroy the spirit of this act. These actions were strongly opposed by people across rural India, activists, and economists and as a consequence, the government was forced to step back from the amendments it was proposing. However the government seems to have decided to ignore its legal responsibility and is using budget cuts to rapidly dilute and undermine the act.

MGNREGA

Speaking about this, Indira Jaising emphasized that the MGNREGA is a law passed by parliament and a government that is unable to dilute the law in parliament cannot use administrative subterfuge and fund squeezes to undermine entitlements provided by the law.

Jayati Ghosh, pointed out that NREGA funding has not been keeping to its demand based requirements and has fallen steadily from 0.8 percent of the GDP in 2009-10 to roughly one fourth of that amount. She pointed further that the approved labour budget of 66,000 crore for this year was arbitrarily halved to roughly 33,000 crore. States were given a capped quota in the middle of the year beyond which they were told not to spend. To make matters worse, the Finance Ministry has illegally and callously made further cuts leaving states and people to face huge, pending liabilities and increasing numbers of delayed wage payments.

Subrat Das said that the budget cuts have taken place across the social sector. For the remaining part of the year, social security pensions and housing for the poor would face a 90 percent cut. In the case of NREGA such cuts are in effect prohibited by law, but the government doesn't seem to care.

Sanjay Sani from Bihar said that the cuts amount to a direct human rights violation by the state as poor workers are neither getting work nor wages for work already done. He pointed out that people in his area in Muzaffarpur marked a ‘kaali diwali' to protest and highlight the distress they were facing due to non-payment of wages and continued dilution of the act.

Nikhil Dey of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan stated that, "Sanjay's picture is multiplied across 10 crore workers who have gone to work on the program this year and the crores of workers who have pending wage payments also in gross violation of the act. He also pointed out that this budgetary restriction was met with strong opposition from many state governments, and a number of Chief Ministers of States (including Bihar, Tripura, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Odisha) wrote to the Center to roll back the cuts and allow the states to run the programme according to its legal responsibility as per the law."

Nikhil Dey further added "With the 2015 union budget to be presented, this trend of reducing budgetary support for programs for the poor will have extremely life debilitating and life threatening effect on the lives of a large sections of the poor. The destruction of the social sector is shifting many of them into situations of distress and desperation. Today, with increasing rural distress, the Government is clearly only pandering to the requirements of the corporate sector. The allocations for MGNREGA in the union budget will be a litmus test for whether the government has any sense of responsibility to India's poorest people, and whether it is even willing to meet its legal responsibilities and adequately fund MGNREGA in keeping with the spirit of the Act."

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For more details please contact Praavita, 9868869900


Press Release of People's Action for Employment Guarantee, 2 February, 2015


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