A coalition of civil society and labour groups has reached out to the Opposition in an effort to “rescue” the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Program (MGNREGA), which they claim the BJP-led government in Delhi is working to dismantle. During a briefing for Members of Parliament conducted on Tuesday at the Constitution Club in Delhi, the members pushed for more funding for the plan and asked for the backing of the opposition parties.
Speakers included Nikhil Dey (Rajasthan), James Herenj (Jharkhand), Ashish Ranjan (Bihar), Richa Singh (Uttar Pradesh), Anuradha Talwar (West Bengal), and Supreme Court attorney Prashant Bhushan. They said that crores of workers and labourers have “not been paid since December 2021,” and that modifications to the attendance system and payment mechanism have been “disastrous” for employees’ interests. This occurs while a 100-day dharna protesting “recent assaults” on the plan continues at Jantar Mantar. The briefing’s overarching goal was to provide lawmakers with the information they needed to protect citizens’ right to work under the MGNREGA
The topic was presented by Jean Drèze, a visiting professor at Ranchi University. He claimed that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government had launched a three-pronged attack on MGNREGA, including inadequate funding, the introduction of an Aadhar-based Payment System (ABPS), and the inception of a real-time attendance system via the National Mobile Monitoring Software (NMMS) app.
According to Professor Dreze, this year’s budget of Rs 60,000 crore is the smallest in the program’s history.When money runs out, work stops. Prof. Dreze noted that the adoption of digital attendance has further robbed employees of their pay because of network troubles and technological faults.
Even many bankers do not understand how the Aadhar-based Payment system works, hence the vast majority of employees cannot be paid with it. He emphasised that it is a crime to fail to compensate employees for their efforts.
According to Nikhil Dey, 15 crore employees throughout the nation are affected by the recent modifications to MGNREGA. We need a political reaction from the parties in opposition to help the people on the ground get their legal rights.
Members of Parliament were asked to file a Privilege Notice in order to force the Rural Development minister to explain his comments to the media in which he implied that the state government should also pay to the salary liabilities under the programme, which would be in violation of MGNREGA.
Digvijaya Singh, a top official in the Congress party, responded to the requests by saying that the workers’ situation is real and promising the members of civil society his complete support. When it comes to the goals of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Job Guarantee Act of 2005, the current administration has consistently shown itself to be at odds with those objectives. MGNREGA, Budgets for all social programmes are being slashed. What is required of us, I fully endorse,” he said.
It is really astonishing to find that out of promised 100 days of work, the labourers are receiving just 34 days of work owing to lack of necessary cash,” said AAP MP Sanjay Singh in reference to the absence of payment. We will bring it up in the legislature, but we also need to consider organising a grassroots campaign.
In addition, several legislators have expressed their solidarity and promised to do all in their power to bring attention to the employees’ suffering.
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