JOBS: The Budget mentions that 12 million jobs are to be generated annually but does not quite allocate funds.
The UPA Government’s flagship income generation programme for the rural areas, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), was allocated Rs 30,100 crore in 2009-10, only Rs 100 crore more than the current year’s revised estimate.
The Budget estimate for this scheme in 2008-09 was Rs 14,400 crore but the revised estimate was Rs 30,000 crore which means an increase of 108 per cent over the budgeted amount in the current year.
And if the Sampoorna Gramin Rozgar Yojana, another rural employment initiative on which the government spent Rs 6,750 crore in 2008-09 is added to this, expenditure on NREGS went up sharply in the current year, from Rs 14,400 crore to Rs 36,750 crore, an increase of 155 per cent
The scheme which completed three years this month had provided up to 40 days of employment on an average to the 3.51 crore families, which translated to roughly Rs 4,000 per family in the period between March and December 2008.
The allocations for the scheme have been virtually quadrupled since it was launched three years ago, from its allocation of Rs 8,000 crore in 2006-07.
It went up to Rs 12,000 crore in 2007-08 and then to Rs 16,000 crore in Budget estimates of 2008-09 and to Rs 30,000 crore and later Rs 36,750 crore in two revisions of the allocations in 2008-09.
In the words of Minister for Rural Development Raghuvansh Prasad, wage employment schemes in the past have never achieved more than 70 crore man days while NREGS has been able to provide 138.76 crore days of work.
Of the workforce that has found jobs through this scheme, 49 per cent have been women while Scheduled Caste and Tribe (SC/ST) workers have been 55 per cent.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said that the programme has resulted in increased wage employment, improved equity with significant benefits flowing to SC/ST and women.
The Budget outlay for Swarnajayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana, which has led to formation of 29 lakh credit linked women groups was Rs 2,115 crore. In the current year, the government allocated Rs 1,933 crore but spent Rs 2,113 crore. The Interim Budget provides Rs 2,115 crore for the programme.
The budget mentions that 12 million jobs are to be generated annually but does not allocate funds for the skill development drive envisaged by the government towards the target.
