 "Three years of Modi: Rural jobs rise as 8.13 bn person-days of work created")
At a time when questions are being raised on the number of jobs created in the organised sector in the past three years of the Narendra Modi government, data furnished by the rural development ministry show that around 8.13 billion person-days of work have been created in the rural sector under its various flagship programmes, including the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) during the period.
“The ministry generated 8.13 billion person-days of work in the past three years through various flagship schemes,” Union Rural Development Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said, while highlighting the achievements of his ministry in the past three years.
A person day is the amount of work done by one person in a working day.
The maximum 6.36 billion person-days of work was generated under MGNREGA, followed by 0.98 billion under the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana and 0.78 billion under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), Tomar said.
For MGNREGA, the rural development ministry was also planning to tweak the method of wage calculation and could consider linking it to Consumer Price Index–Rural to ensure a greater increase.
At present, wages are linked to CPI-Agriculture Labour (AL), which gives higher weightage to food items.
Due to this, the annual wage hike has been marginal in 2017-18 as food prices have remained stable or flat due to the Food Security Act. “Linking MGNREGA wages to CPI-Rural will ensure that hikes are optimum as it has less weight of food items in them,” a senior official said.
Meanwhile, Tomar said Centre’s total expenditure on rural development increased from Rs 58,630 crore in 2013-14 to Rs 95,099 crore in 2016-17, a 62 per cent rise, as improving the quality of life of the people in rural areas topped the Modi government’s agenda.
The Union minister added the government enhanced the expenditure to make gram panchayats poverty free.
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