Stop messing with NREGS, and poor people’s lives

The central government is obstructing NREGS funds to Opposition-governed states, such as West Bengal, on the grounds that they are misused

Imagine that you have this system at the office whereby you work for the time you’re contracted to work, your boss makes bank transfers according to your contract, and voila, what’s due to you turns up in your bank account. Crazy, right?

Now imagine that your workplace, which thinks of itself as tech-forward, decides to improve the wage payment system, as follows: They will pay you as soon as you walk over a bed of coals and submit the eyelash of an emu, because emu eyelashes are cool, and this system starts day after tomorrow; and by the way, your billable hours might be arbitrarily reduced. What’s not to love, right?

It’s not an exact analogy, but this is essentially what’s happening in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) programme, and it is why labourers, unions, and activists under the NREGA Sangharsh Morcha have been sitting in an indefinite dharna at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar for over three weeks, protesting what they call a deliberate, unjust, and illegal attack on the NREGS programme by the government.

Also Read: NREGS needs more money, commitment

The first part of this is underfunding, and huge arrears. The government has starved the programme to Rs 60,000 crore, the lowest outlay in its history, which means that while workers are legally guaranteed 100 days of work, the programme can only sustain a fraction of that. Some workers haven’t been paid for months.

Second, a reasonably functioning payment system has suddenly been jackknifed tech-ward, so that attendance has to be digitally logged twice a day via the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS) app, and workers must compulsorily be paid via the Aadhaar-based Payment System (ABPS). Never mind that large areas have little or no connectivity, and logged photos go unmonitored. Becoming eligible for the ABPS involves confusing bureaucratic misery, but most incredibly, more than half of NREGS workers are currently not eligible. The Ministry of Rural Development knows this, because it is the government’s own data. Please take a moment to register this: More than half of registered workers cannot be paid via ABPS, but must be paid via ABPS. This innovation, which would merely be absurd if it weren’t so criminally indifferent to people’s needs and rights, came into effect on February 1, 2023, via notice on January 30, 2023.

Does that remind you of any other large-impact, short-notice orders that threw hundreds of millions of Indians under the bus? This government, which claims to champion the poor, has more than once leaned hardest, and completely unnecessarily, on the most vulnerable — and this NREGS tweak now deprives an estimated 15 crore Indians of pay that they have already worked for.

The central government is also obstructing NREGS funds to Opposition-governed states, such as West Bengal, on the grounds that they are misused. Oddly, it isn’t interested in prosecuting those who are misusing them. As one union leader asks, why should workers pay the price for delinquent officials?

No amount of fighting corruption justifies withholding earned pay, making people go hungry, interrupting kids’ educations, and forcing risk-fraught migration. Being so tech-drunk that you further crush vulnerable populations is not development, it is criminal and barbaric. It is also completely illegal — the government is bound by law to provide 100 days of work, and pay workers within a stipulated time.

The protesters at Jantar Mantar are repeatedly attempting to get the MoRD’s attention to brief it on these issues, including sending delegations to try to meet the minister, Giriraj Singh — who, on March 14, claimed to parliament that he wasn’t aware of any dharna. They are trying to get the attention of Opposition parties, and asking why they aren’t on the streets advocating for their constituents. They are trying to get anyone’s attention at all, to point out that NREGS is a legal right, crucial to people’s lives, and that it is being throttled.

Maybe that’s why the nonsense playing out in parliament is so loud: To drown out the travesty of justice playing out across the country.