'Devastating impact': Rural workers suffer as Govt of India NREGA budget down by 34%

Counterview Desk
A civil rights group, the NREGA Sangharsh Morcha has sent a letter to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj stating that 34 per cent decrease in the fiscal budget of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) for year 2021-22 has added to woes on India’s rural population, already suffering from “devastating impact” of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Claiming to echo demands of crores of NREGA workers, the letter states, at at time when there is a sharp rise in rural unemployment, “MGNREGA as an entitlement for people’s right to work with dignity and social protection must be strengthened”.

Text:

The COVID 19 pandemic continues to be a serious public health issue with devastating impact on the lives and livelihoods of workers, especially informal sector, daily wage workers.
With ever increasing rate of unemployment as per the report of the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, in August 2021 it is at 8.32 per cent, and 34 per cent decrease in the fiscal budget of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) for year 2021-22 as compared to the revised estimate of the year 2020-21 is adding further woes on rural populations for survival and employment. The huge inflation in the past two years also means that in real terms the wages in MGNREGA remain paltry and insufficient.
In such trying times, the spirit of MGNREGA as an entitlement for people’s right to work with dignity and social protection must be strengthened. It is important that the MGNREGA is envisioned as a gender-responsive program for recovery from economic crisis with much needed reforms in the implementation mechanism and provisions over and above all existing entitlements in the MGNREGA.
The Management Information System of Government of India shows that over 70 percent of the total household provided employment in the year 2020-21 have already been provided employment in the last six months.
The mandate of the MGNREGA should be expanded as guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every rural adult member who seeks to do unskilled manual work. This will increase scope for rural unemployed labour to engage in productive resource building activity with protection of workers right to work with dignity, wages and social security, especially in the areas where there is forced migration for survival and livelihoods.
The NREGA Sangharsh Morcha therefore demands:

The Government of India should notify a wage rate of Rs.600/day for NREGA workers as per recommendations of the 7th Pay commission which will allow dignified living for 15cr households who are registered under NREGA. A respectable increase in wages of MGNREGA workers has become urgent keeping in mind the huge inflation in the prices of food and all consumer goods.
The Government of India should notify allocation of 150 days of wage work annually for each job card holding individual. Keeping with this demand, allocate necessary budget for employment of 29 crore job card registered workers.
The Section 3 of the MGNREGA laid down that the wages shall be paid within 15 days of the closure of the Muster Roll. However, there are delays in payment of wages. With non-implementation of the detailed guidelines for the compensation of the delayed payments as per the Para 29 of the Section II of the MGNREGA. It has been also observed that there has been significant delays in payments of wages from the central government and in a pandemic year where rural citizens are cash strapped, lost their earnings and became more indebtedness as a result , these delays in releasing wages are unacceptable. We strongly demand that the central government simplifies it’s payments process and ensure on-time payments of wages in a decentralized manner. Also, all the back wages of MGNREGA workers across the states be paid as per the guidelines for the delayed payment and the Supreme Court orders in the Swaraj Abhiyan v Union of India case.
All members of NREGA job card holding families should be brought under the Employment State Insurance Act as a social protection measure of all MGNREGA workers.
Each worksite should follow Covid protocol with all required provisions such as face mask, facility for hand wash and / or sanitizers, drinking water, shed for rest and medical assistance.
The rationale for trifurcation of FTO based on the caste categories of workers is unclear and is causing unnecessary tension among workers. This is also at odds with the universal nature of the Act. The caste-based trifurcation of FTO needs to be revoked.

We trust that you would appreciate the need for such amendments in the policy as millions of rural households across all states in India struggle for their life and work. We sincerely hope that the Govt of India will make much awaited provisions at such a critical juncture.

Comments

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor* This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.

India's health workers have no legal right for their protection, regrets NGO network

Counterview Desk In a letter to Union labour and employment minister Santosh Gangwar, the civil rights group Occupational and Environmental Health Network of India (OEHNI), writing against the backdrop of strike by Bhabha hospital heath care workers, has insisted that they should be given “clear legal right for their protection”.

Uttarakhand tunnel disaster: 'Question mark' on rescue plan, appraisal, construction

By Bhim Singh Rawat* As many as 40 workers were trapped inside Barkot-Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi after a portion of the 4.5 km long, supposedly completed portion of the tunnel, collapsed early morning on Sunday, Nov 12, 2023. The incident has once again raised several questions over negligence in planning, appraisal and construction, absence of emergency rescue plan, violations of labour laws and environmental norms resulting in this avoidable accident.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Job opportunities decreasing, wages remain low: Delhi construction workers' plight

By Bharat Dogra* It was about 32 years back that a hut colony in posh Prashant Vihar area of Delhi was demolished. It was after a great struggle that the people evicted from here could get alternative plots that were not too far away from their earlier colony. Nirmana, an organization of construction workers, played an important role in helping the evicted people to get this alternative land. At that time it was a big relief to get this alternative land, even though the plots given to them were very small ones of 10X8 feet size. The people worked hard to construct new houses, often constructing two floors so that the family could be accommodated in the small plots. However a recent visit revealed that people are rather disheartened now by a number of adverse factors. They have not been given the proper allotment papers yet. There is still no sewer system here. They have to use public toilets constructed some distance away which can sometimes be quite messy. There is still no...

Women's rights leaders told to negotiate with Muslimness, as India's donor agencies shun the word Muslim

By A Representative Former vice-president Hamid Ansari has sharply criticized donor agencies engaged in nongovernmental development work, saying that they seek to "help out" marginalizes communities with their funds, but shy away from naming Muslims as the target group, something, he insisted, needs to change. Speaking at a book release function in Delhi, he said, since large sections of Muslims are poor, they need political as also social outreach.

Warning bells for India: Tribal exploitation by powerful corporate interests may turn into international issue

By Ashok Shrimali* Warning bells are ringing for India. Even as news drops in from Odisha that Adivasi villages, one after another, are rejecting the top UK-based MNC Vedanta's plea for mining, a recent move by two senior scholars Felix Padel and Samarendra Das suggests the way tribals are being exploited in India by powerful international and national business interests may become an international issue. In fact, one has only to count days when things may be taken up at the United Nations level, with India being pushed to the corner. Padel, it may be recalled, is a major British authority on indigenous peoples across the world, with several scholarly books to his credit.

Gujarat Bitcoin scam worth Rs 5,000 crore "linked" with BJP leaders: Need for Supreme Court monitored probe

By Shaktisinh Gohil* BJP hit a jackpot in the form of demonetisation, which it used as an alibi to convert black money into white in Gujarat. Even as party scrambles for answers of how the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB), whose director is BJP president Amit Shah, received old currency worth Rs 745.58 crore in just five days, and how Rs 3118.51 crore was deposited in 11 district cooperative banks linked with Gujarat BJP leaders, a new mega Bitcoin scam, worth more than Rs 5,000 crore has been unraveled.

Counterview

Search This Blog