11% fewer households demanded work under MGNREGA this April, shows data

Indicating a turnaround in the employment situation in rural areas, the number of households seeking work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in April was 11.15 per cent lower than in the equivalent month last year.

However, the data also reve­als that compared to pre-pandemic years, a disproportionately large number of people — 23.26 million households in April — are still seeking work under the MGNREGA.

This, some economists said, also reflects that though rural economic activities are improving largely in the non-farm sector, they have still not returned to the pre pandemic levels.

In April 2021, 26.18 million households had sought work under the scheme while in April 2020, the number was 13.41 million. The April 2020 data is not strictly comparable to that of other years because work sites could not operate during much of that month on account of the first lockdown.

“The drop in the number of households seeking work under the MGNREGA might be due to the migration of manual casual labourers back from rural areas to the cities where almost all economic activities, including in contact sectors like hotels and airlines, have resumed in full strength. Also, the severity of the fourth Covid wave hasn’t been acute so far, which is fuelling demand in other sectors,” S Mahendra Dev, director of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Develop­ment Research (IGIDR), told Business Standard.

He said in the coming months demand for work might go down even further but the fact that still over 20 million households — in the comparable pre-pandemic month it was 16-17 million —were looking for work under the scheme showed that things had not normalised.

Chakradhar Buddha, researcher, LibTech India, said the work demand data pointed towards the fact that “we haven’t come back to pre-pandemic normal economic activities in rural areas”.

This has also been borne out by the work pattern in several states where demand has dropped not because people don’t want to work but for other reasons, which need closer analysis.

LibTech India is a team of engineers, social workers, and social scientists, who, inspired by the Right to Information movement and the idea of social audit, focus on various aspects of improving transparency, accountability, and democratic engagement in rural public services delivery.

“We need a closer analysis of the work demand data,” Chakradhar said.

Meanwhile, civil society activists and others have been pointing out that the money allocated for the MGNREGA in the Budget for FY23 is inadequate and could lead to demand getting artificially suppressed.

Their argument is despite an allocation around Rs 73,000 crore this fiscal year, the actual expenditure could be lower because a significant chunk, almost Rs 20,000 crore, could be spent on clearing the dues of FY22.

In FY22 also, the Centre had budgeted Rs 73,000 crore for the MGNREGA but ended up spending almost Rs 98,000 crore due to continued robust work demand.

In FY21, considered a landmark year for the scheme due to a sudden increase in demand because of the reverse migration of millions of workers from cities to villages after the first lockdown, the Centre spent nearly Rs 1.2 trillion -- a record -- on the MGNREGA.