NEW DELHI: Barely months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi criticized MNREGS calling it a “living monument” of UPA’s failures, the Rural Development Ministry today said the employment scheme has benefited villages by reducing distress migration and improving wage levels among the poor.
“In all states and Union Territories including Jharkhand, MGNREGA has reduced distress migration among rural poor, smoothened rural consumption in the lean season, set high standards in transparency, addressed under-employment problem and created assets and improved livelihoods,” Minister of State for Rural Development Sudharshan Bhagat said in a written reply in Lok Sabha.
The minister was replying to questions by three BJP MPs— Varun Gandhi, Pashupati Nath Singh and Harish Chandra alias Harish Dwivedi –on issues including whether the life standards of workers has improved as a result of MGNREGS.
The minister praised the scheme saying it “gave boost to the financial inclusion” and “strengthened Gram Panchayats”.
The MGNREGA, he said, “improved the wage levels in rural areas and thereby increasing the income levels of the poorest of the poor, set standards for decent working conditions and helped in bringing fallow lands into cultivation.”
In March, the Prime Minister, while replying to the debate on Motion of Thanks to the President’s address in Lok Sabha, was particularly severe on the Congress on its pet scheme MNREGS.
“This is a living monument of your failure to tackle poverty in 60 years. With song and dance and beating of drums, I will continue with the scheme,” he had said.
“MNREGA will stay. My political instinct says don’t end MNREGA. I will never make that mistake,” Modi had said. A day after Modi’s remarks, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had given a marginal hike to the schemes allocation from Rs 34,000 crore to Rs 34,699 crore, while promising to enhance the allocation by another Rs 5,000 crore if there was tax buoyancy.
In an effort to prevent delay in payments to workers under the scheme, the Union Cabinet yesterday approved direct benefit transfer to beneficiaries of the scheme.
Battling the Opposition’s charge of pursuing “anti-poor” policies, the NDA government had in June this year decided to increase the number of workdays under MGNREGA from 100 to 150 in drought-hit areas.
Before that the ministry had decided to provide 150 days of wage employment under the scheme for Scheduled Tribe households living in forest areas, which allows the households to undertake additional work on their own land.
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, launched just before the last Lok Sabha polls in 2009, was the flagship scheme of Congress-led UPA.
The scheme, in which half of the beneficiaries are women, roughly reaches every fifth household in the rural areas. The scheme is in operation in 632 districts in the country.–PTI
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