4% more households demand work under MGNREGA in April, shows data

With more than half the country under some sort of lockdown, the flagship employment programme — MGNREGA — is once again in demand.

In April, around 27.3 million households demanded work under the scheme, 4.1 per cent more than the number of households that sought work in March 2021, and also among the highest work demand for April in the last few years.

The April work demand was much higher than the same month last year when the figure was 13.4 million.

However, some experts say the work demand pattern between April 2021 and April 2020 is not comparable as worksites in several states weren’t operational last year due to lockdown.