NREGA workers – under the banner of the NREGA Sangharsh Morcha – held a press conference today at the Press Club of India to expose the inadequacy of budgetary allocations for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 (NREGA) by the Modi Government and the arbitrary deletion of job cards across the country. The workers’ press conference followed a parliamentary debate on 3rd December 2024, during which the Minister for Rural Development and the Minister of State (MoS) made claims about the functioning of NREGA. The workers, however, debunked these claims, presenting a detailed counter-narrative based on ground realities.
Exposing the MoS Chandrashekhar Pemmasani’s misleading claim that the NDA Government has increased the NREGA budget annually by ₹20,000 crore and that NREGA wages are being paid on time, renowned economist Jean Dreze pointed out that it is only Fund Transfer Orders (FTOs) that are generated on time, even as crediting of workers’ accounts is delayed by weeks or months. Further, Jharkhand NREGA Watch’s Afsana Khatun highlighted how insufficient initial budget allocations lead to severe delays in wage payments and denial of work on demand once funds run out. It was also emphasised that there is an urgent need to increase MNREGA wages to ₹800 per day in line with rising inflation and cost of living.
Jitendra Paswan from Bihar criticised the imposition of arbitrary, opaque and unjustified technical interventions like the Aadhar-Based Payments System (ABPS) and online attendance under the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS). Persistent connectivity issues and technical glitches with the NMMS app result in workers losing their attendance and consequently wages for the day. Making matters worse, ABPS requirements like stringent KYC procedures and Aadhaar seeding with bank accounts has caused widespread deletion of job cards, with 9 crore workers’s names having been deleted since FY 2022-23. Despite MoS Pemmasani’s claim that these deletions are routine, Libtech’s Chakradhar Buddha highlighted the significant spike in deletions since the introduction of ABPS.
Further, a NREGA worker from West Bengal, Ambarish Soren condemned the stoppage of NREGA funds to West Bengal by the Centre since December 2021, which has stalled NREGA work in the state for over three years while pending wages for FY 2021-22 remain unpaid. Even as the Rural Development Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan justified the action saying they have proof of large-scale corruption in implementation of NREGA in West Bengal, neither have any officials been held accountable, nor have any kind of penalties been imposed. The NREGA Act does not authorise the denial of wages to workers due to implementation irregularities. NREGA Sangharsh Morcha demands that the Rural Development Ministry share details of the investigation and publish the investigation report.
The workers assert that inadequate budgetary allocations and arbitrary technical interventions are two sides of the same coin, both used to systematically dismantle NREGA and strip workers of their rights. Announcing a two-day protest at Jantar Mantar on 5-6 December 2024, NREGA Sangharsh Morcha called upon citizens to join the protest and extend solidarity with the workers’ cause.
