20 years of MNREGA: BJP, Congress battle to claim scheme's success

BJP and Congress are set to lock horns over MNREGA's legacy as the scheme marks 20 years, with both sides claiming credit ahead of crucial state elections

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) will mark 20 years since its passage, and the political contestation over it is set to be as vigorous in the months leading up to its anniversary as it was a decade ago when the law completed 10 years.

 

Over the past week, the opposition, especially the ruling parties of Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Kerala — all three states are scheduled for Assembly polls in April-May next year — and the Congress, which hopes to unseat the ruling Left Democratic Front in Kerala, have upped the ante in criticising the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre for “undermining” the scheme and discriminating against the three states by reducing their respective allocations under the scheme.

 

The government has countered the allegations by pointing out, as it did on Tuesday in the Lok Sabha, that the Centre has provided Tamil Nadu more funds under MNREGA than Uttar Pradesh. It also said that there were several instances of alleged misappropriation of funds provided to the Trinamool Congress-led West Bengal government under MNREGA.

 

On March 19, Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi, in a Zero Hour mention in the Rajya Sabha, said the government had “systematically undermined” MNREGA. She demanded that the minimum wage should be hiked to Rs 400 a day and the number of guaranteed workdays increased from 100 to 150 a year.

 

An hour later, the government issued a press statement titled ‘Effective Implementation of MNREGS in the Current Decade’. The government said the budgetary allocation for FY07 was Rs 11,300 crore for the scheme, which increased to Rs 33,000 crore in 2013-14 (the last year of the Congress-led UPA government). However, in the last 10 years, it has increased continuously to Rs 86,000 crore for FY26, “the highest ever budgetary allocation at the BE stage”, it said. The government said it spent a record Rs 1,11,000 crore under the scheme in 2020-21 to ensure livelihood security to people distressed during the Covid-19 pandemic. “This shows the government’s sincere commitment towards the effective implementation of the scheme.”

 

The opposition, however, has kept up the pressure on the question of allocations under MNREGA to states. On Tuesday, Congress’ Wayanad Lok Sabha member Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi joined the party’s MPs from Kerala to protest in Parliament premises over the alleged neglect of MNREGS workers and demanded an increase in their wages to cope with “inflation”.

 

The Congress, at the meeting of its Working Committee (CWC) in Ahmedabad on April 8 and 9, is set to highlight the government’s “step-motherly” treatment of the scheme, a source in the party said. The effort by the Congress is to take ownership of the scheme and convey across the country that it was the Congress-led UPA government of Manmohan Singh that had Parliament pass the scheme.

 

Parliament passed the Act on August 23, 2005. It was notified in the first week of September and rolled out across the country on February 2, 2006. In its 2014 Lok Sabha election manifesto, prepared by senior party leader Murli Manohar Joshi, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said it would link MNREGA to agriculture.

 

On February 27, 2015, speaking in Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi mocked MNREGA. He said he would continue MNREGA “because it is a living monument to the failures of the Congress party”. He said that after 60 years, people are still made to dig holes in the ground.

 

By February 2016, the government was convinced of MNREGA’s importance. On February 2, 2016, the Centre held an MGNREGA Sammelan in the national capital to mark 10 years of the rollout of the scheme, with the then finance minister Arun Jaitley as the chief guest at the event. The intervening months had witnessed drought and farmers’ distress in several states, and the demand for MNREGA work had increased. Its importance was again underlined during the pandemic.

 

In February 2023, with the scheme completing 17 years of its rollout, Giriraj Singh, who was then handling the rural development portfolio at the Centre, pointed out that asset creation during the UPA rule was a mere 17 per cent under the scheme. He said in the nine years of the Modi government, asset creation had crossed 60 per cent. “He gave full credit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for reorienting MNREGA and its mandate from merely digging and filling holes,” according to a Press Information Bureau release.

 

However, with its 20th anniversary around the corner and crucial Assembly elections to West Bengal, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu (along with Puducherry and BJP-ruled Assam), the BJP and the opposition, especially the Congress, are set to lock horns to own up MNREGA’s success as a policy palliative for the country’s poor.