The finance minister has announced an additional Rs 40,000 crore for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) over and above the budgeted estimate of Rs 61,500 crore for this financial year. This is a welcome move by the Central government. However, demand for the rural job programme will be many times more than usual. A programme that has gone through continued fund shortage and implementation glitches since 2014 therefore needs more than just additional allocations at this hour of crisis.
Since its launch in 2006, the MGNREGS has been a lifeline for nearly 130 million rural households
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