The guaranteed rural employment under the Centre’s flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (MGNREGA) has come off highs seen during the COVID-19 pandemic years.
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The average employment days per household under MNREGA slipped to a five-year low of 47.84 in the financial year 2022-203. This compares to the average of 50.88 days in FY19, shows data released by the government on April 26.
Government officials explained to CNBC-TV18, the lower the employment numbers under MNREGA, the better it is for the rural economy. As MNREGA is a job provider of the last resort, a consistently high job data under the scheme doesn’t augur well and is generally read as a sign of economic distress.
They added that households availing full 100 days of MNREGA are the ones that are in abject poverty. This number declining steadily is a good sign and by the same logic, the average days of employment under the scheme is also off sharply.
MNREGA scheme is aimed at enhancing livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.
The multi-year low rural employment under MNREGA is based on various government parameters that assess the scheme on a real time basis.
For instance, total households employed under MNREGA have progressively declined from a high of 7.55 crore in FY21, the first year of the pandemic and nationwide lockdown to 6.19 crore households in the financial year ended.
Similarly, the number of individuals working under the job guarantee scheme has also come down from the COVID-19 pandemic years. In FY23, 8.76 crore individuals worked under the scheme as against over 11 crore workers in FY21, the highest for any given year. This is a 21 percent decline over two financial years, FY21 and FY22.
Also, a total of 36 lakh households availed 100 days’ work under MNREGA in FY23, 30 percent lower than 56 lakh the previous fiscal, and 50 percent lower than nearly 72 lakh in FY21. On this particular parameter, MNREGA numbers have been witnessing a steady decline, even from the pre-pandemic years.
However, FY23 MNREGA employment data — both, the number of households as well as individuals with guaranteed jobs — is higher than in the years prior to the pandemic like FY15, FY16, FY17, FY18, FY19 etc.
