BEYOND 100 DAYS

The national rural employment guarantee programme financially empowers village panchayats, thus making them an effective self-governing system

- L K ATHEEQ

“GUARANTEED simple assurance is the reason the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has emerged as the world’s largest social safety net against rural unemployment. The demand for the scheme, designed under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005, is such that budgetary allocation for MGNREGS has increased tenfold since it was first implemented in 200 districts—to ₹110,500 crore in 2020-21 from ₹12,000 crore in 2006-07. The past financial year saw a huge spike in expenditure due to the covid-19 pandemic: the ₹110,500 crore was spent against a budget allocation of R61,500 crore. As wage-earners returned to their villages from cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Panjim, Mangaluru and Bengaluru, MGNREGS came to the rescue of these workers. In Karnataka alone, the person-days of work generated during April-June 2020 were 44 million, compared to 36 million during the corresponding months in 2019. The number increased to 47.1 million during April-June 2021. In the absence of MGNREGS, gram panchayats would have found it challenging to deal with so many unemployed people in villages.

But MGNREGS does not provide only social safety nets. Over the years, it has also emerged as an invaluable vehicle for rural transformation and a significant support for local governments. Let’s understand the ways MGNREGS supports gram panchayats through the example of Karnataka.