The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (Mahatma Gandhi NREGA) aims at enhancing livelihood security of households in rural areas of the country by providing at least one hundred days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.

It may be noted that the budget allocation for the Financial Year 2006-07 was Rs 11,300 crores, which increased to 33,000 crore in 2013-14. This has increased continuously over the last 10 years. Current Financial year’s allocation of Rs 86,000 crore is the highest ever budgetary allocation at the BE stage. Government has spent a record Rs 1,11,000 crore under the scheme in the year 2020-21 to ensure livelihood security to people distressed during COVID19 pandemic. This shows Government’s sincere commitment towards the effective implementation of the Scheme.

Similarly, the total persondays generated between FY 2006-07 to FY 2013-14 were 1660 crore, whereas, the total persondays between FY 2014-15 to FY 2024-25 has been 3029 crore, which is 82% more than the decade before 2014. In this process, over the last years from 2014-15 to 2024-25, the Central Government has released 7,81,302 crores which resulted in the creation of 8.07 Crore rural assets. While in the previous decade from 2006-07 to 2013-14, only 2,13,220 crores were released which resulted in creation of 1.53 Crore rural assets. Over the last 10 years, Government’s increased efforts have led to a remarkable increase in the creation of rural assets which is evident from over 526% increase in the rural assets which are geotagged and of better quality. Moreover, due to continued focus on women empowerment, the participation of women has increased from 48% in FY 2013-14 to over 58% in the current FY 2024-25.

There are 266 works permissible under Mahatma Gandhi NREGA, out of which 150 works are related to agriculture and allied, 58 are related to Natural Resource Management (NRM) and 58 works are that of Rural Infrastructure. Various water related works such as check dams, farm ponds, community ponds, irrigation open wells, etc. are taken up under the Scheme. Government’s continued thrust on water conservation has yielded remarkable results, evident in the form of significant reduction in the number of water-stressed rural blocks from 2264 to 1456 (35% reduction) in the given decade. Another major success is in the form of Mission Amrit Sarovar, which has led to the creation of over 68,000 Amrit Sarovars in the country in Phase I. Currently, Phase II of Mission Amrit Sarovar has been rolled out with a renewed focus on water availability with community participation, Jan Bhagidari, at its core.

The Government’s focus on improving the livelihood opportunities for the most vulnerable sections of the society can been seen in the substantial increase in the creation of individual assets from 17.6% in FY 2013-14 to 56.99% in FY 2024-25.

It is inaccurate to say that ABPS (Aadhaar Based Payment System) or NMMS(National Mobile Monitoring System) are exclusionary. In fact, these have been major reform processes to ensure effective implementation of this Scheme. For instance, ABPS helps in better targeting, increasing the efficiency of the system and reducing the delays in the payments arising out of frequent changes in the bank account, thereby, ensuring better inclusion, curbing leakages. As on date, Aadhaar seeding has been accomplished for 13.45 crores (99.49%) active workers under MGNREGA, whereas in 2014, Aadhaar seeding was done for only 76 lakh workers. Similarly, NMMS has brought about enhanced transparency in the implementation of MGNREGA. Electronic real-time attendance capturing through NMMS has streamlined the timely creation of muster rolls as well as elimination of fake attendance. Moreover, in case of exceptional circumstances, there is a provision of approving the manual attendance at the field level.

The Government has been continuously working on improving the transparency and accountability in Mahatma Gandhi NREGA. The adoption of National Electronic Fund Management System (NeFMS) and Aadhaar Based Payment System (ABPS) in the current decade have made MGNREGA, the biggest DBT Scheme in the country. 100% of the wage disbursement is being done electronically through DBT. Earlier in the absence of such mechanisms, there was a possibility of leakages as the payment of wages through e-FMS was merely 37% in 2013. Similarly, other path breaking digital initiatives like GIS based planning, Geo-tagging of assets, SECURE for estimate calculation etc. have made this Scheme one of the most transparently run schemes in the country. This is evident from a comprehensive MIS System NREGASOFT with all data regarding persondays generation and assets available in the public domain. This along with JANMANREGA mobile app significantly increased citizen oversight of the program which was absent before 2014.

Moreover, enhanced focus on Social Audit, inspections through Area Officer App and other interventions have resulted in a robust monitoring framework which was absent before 2014.

Details of “Effective implementation NREGA 10 years” is in the annexure.

 

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