NEW DELHI: Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) chairperson and Rajya Sabha lawmaker Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday demanded an increase in the wages and more guaranteed workdays under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and accused the union government of “systematically undermining” the welfare programme by keeping its budget allocation stagnant.
Speaking in the Upper House during the Zero Hour, Gandhi said the right to employment enacted by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in 2005 was “a landmark legislation that served as a crucial safety net for millions of rural poor”.
“…It is deeply concerning that the present BJP government has systematically undermined the scheme. The budget allocation remains stagnant at ₹86,000 crore, a 10-year low as a percentage of GDP,” she said.
Gandhi went on to say, when adjusted for inflation, the effective budget declines by ₹4,000 crore, and estimates suggest nearly 20% of the allocated funds will be used to clear pending dues from previous years.
“Additionally, the scheme faces multiple challenges, including the exclusionary Aadhaar-based payment and the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS), persistent delays in wage payment and wage rates not adequate to compensate for inflation,” she said.
The NMMS is an app used for real-time attendance of workers at MGNREGA worksites along with geotagged photographs. In 2005 the UPA government rolled out MGNREGA, a flagship scheme that guaranteed 100 days of wage employment in a financial year to at least one member of rural household.
Seeking better wages and more workdays she said the minimum wage should be increased to ₹400 per day, ensuring timely disbursement and the number of guaranteed workdays should be raised from 100 to 150 per year.
This is her second Zero Hour intervention in the House. In February, she expressed concern over the alleged exclusion of millions of eligible Indians from receiving food security benefits under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013, on account of outdated census data.
“Around 14 crore eligible Indians are thus being deprived of their right to food benefits under the NFSA,” she said, criticising the delay in the conduct of the decadal enumeration.