More NREGA job cards, but dip in houses getting 100 days of work

With four months left in 2020-21, 1.3 crore job cards have been issued this year under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), reveals a report by a group advocating and monitoring the execution of the Central law.

The MGNREGA gained greater significance this year as the pandemic crushed livelihoods across the country. The NREGA National Tracker December 2020, released by the People's Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG), says that the total job cards demanding work this year is 7.5 crore, while total active job cards are 9.02 crore. Eighty-three per cent of all active job cards demanded work.

However, only 1.9 million households have finished 100 days of work (mandated under MGNREGA), as compared to 4.06 million last year, the report points out, adding that the government failed to meet the rising demand triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The report notes that 4.56 million households that had applied for a job card had not been issued one this year. Of the 14 major states that were tracked, Tamil Nadu had the highest percentage of active users from its total registered job cards (56.81 per cent), while Maharashtra had the lowest (13.61). The all-India average was 30.75 per cent.

Out of active jobs cards, Uttar Pradesh with 98.16 per cent had the highest percentage of demand for work this year, whereas Maharashtra recorded the lowest demand (46.65 per cent). The national demand was 83.9 per cent. In response to the demand from job cardholders, Jharkhand issued the highest percentage of cards (34.25 per cent), while Telangana (7.7 per cent) issued the least, and 17.01 per cent nationwide.

As many as 1.7 million households have completed 100 days of employment this year. A further 6.4 million households have finished 80 days of employment, the report said. Of these, 350,000 households in Andhra Pradesh, 270,000 in West Bengal and 210,000 households in Rajasthan have completed 100 days of employment.

A bigger number of the households (6.43 million) received work in the 81-99 day duration nationally. The number of households that received between 71 and 80 days of work was also lower, at 3.3 million.

As apparent from the rise in demand, this year also recorded a 43 per cent increase in persondays generated till November, compared to last year.

The amount allocated to the MGNREGA this year is Rs 105,000 crore. The NREGA Tracker points out that over 71 per cent (Rs 74,563 crore) of the funds has been utilised so far, and pending payments are Rs 9,590 crore (9.1 per cent). This means that only 19.8 per cent (Rs 20,847 crore) of the corpus remains for generating fresh employment.

“With a little more than 100 days still left in the financial year and the previous trends showing a high persondays generation in the last four months, NREGA will require another financial boost,” it adds.

M S Raunaq, secretary, PAEG, says that trends in the past years suggest at least 30-35 per cent of the jobs generated in a year are over the course of the last four months. “The 19.8 per cent of the remaining funds will go not just for payment of unskilled wages but also for materials that will be required,” he says, anticipating a shortage of funds.

The last quarter also sees a lot of pending payments that usually are made in the next financial year. Interviews on the ground reveal that people want to be paid early since they are running short of money, says Raunaq. “In a situation where we are already facing a lot of unemployment, if people are not paid on time, it will create further distress.”