Locked out

Two years after becoming the only state to be excluded from the Centre's ruralemployment guarantee scheme, villages in West Bengal grapple with distress migration and debt traps

- HIMANSHU N

THE BIDUPUR colony in the heart of Jalangi village in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district was once a bustling community with over 70 families. Today, 50 of the houses lie vacant, and the colony has turned into a ghostly shadow of its former self. Like the residents of the colony, people from across villages in West Bengal have been forced to migrate to cities in the past two years because of the abrupt discontinuation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), a Central scheme that guarantees 100 days of employment to rural households that demand work.

On December 21, 2021, the central government halted the funds for the scheme after accusing the state government of financial irregularities. Three months later, in March 2022, the Centre discontinued the scheme in the state, plunging at least 13.1 million people who demanded work under MGNREGS in 2020-21 into uncertainty.

The scheme’s discontinuation has pushed rural West Bengal into “extreme distress”, says Nikhil Dey, co-founder of worker rights nonprofit Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan. It not only ensured guaranteed wages for the rural poor but also acted as a bulwark against distress migration. Additionally, it helped stabilise labour prices by granting the poor the right to negotiate their wages. “All of these gains have been undone in the state, forcing people to seek employment in distant cities under dismal working conditions and meagre pay,” he says.