On 23rd August 2004 the Lok Sabha passed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which ensures a livelihood for millions of poor living in rural areas.
The MGNREGA was launched in Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh on 2nd February 2006 and initially covered 200 of the most impoverished districts across India. The Act was then carried out in phases, 130 districts were added from 2007 to 2008 that gradually spread to over 626 districts across the country.
The MGNREGA is like a social security measure which recognized the right to employment as a fundamental legal right, which is like a ray of hope for millions of Indians living in rural areas. This act is a job guarantee scheme for rural Indians which ensures a legal guarantee for at least 100 days of paid employment in every financial year to adults who are willing to take up unskilled manual work at a minimum wage of Rs. 120/day. In case the government fails to provide work to people, it will still have to pay the workers their daily wages.
The reason behind introducing the MGNREGA was to increase the purchasing power of unskilled people in rural areas, irrespective of the fact whether they fell below the poverty line category or not. It has been observed that 1/3 of the work force in rural areas comprise of women. Initially, this act was called the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), but the prefix Mahatma Gandhi was added to it on 2nd October 2009, Gandhi’s birth anniversary.
The Government believed that the MGNREGA had what it took to improve the financial standing and purchasing power of people in rural areas, decrease distress migration and create assets in rural areas. This act also went ahead and created gender equality and social upliftment, as most workers in rural areas are women and members of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
The MGNREGA was brought up by the UPA-1 coalition government along with support from left parties and was also one of the reasons the UPA came back to power as UPA-2. One of the major influences on the MGNREGA was Dr. Jean Dreze, a Belgian economist. Apart from this, many other organizations supported and campaigned for this act.
The MGNREGA had two main objectives; rural development and employment. Specific rural development, such as water conservation, flood prevention, afforestation, digging ponds and plating trees was targeted. The 12th Five Year Plan introduced some changes in the MGNREGA and launched MGNREGA 2.0 which included the following:
- Expanding the list of work taken up by the scheme
- Strengthening the demand of work among rural workers
- Improving the labour budget
- Reduce delays in paying wages, because a delay means that the government is required to pay compensation to the workers
- Strengthening the bank and post office network to ensure that workers are getting their wages and where banks and post offices are not widely available in rural areas, the introduction of a banking correspondence model
- Constant monitoring of projects that are being carried out.
The implementation of an employment guarantee scheme requires the government to spend money, but in the long run such a program reduces the problem of unemployment and the economic costs related to large scale poverty. The MGNREGA was passed in the Lok Sabha on 23rd August 2004 and in the Rajya Sabha on 25th August 2005 and was eventually signed by the President of India on 5th September 2005. According to the Indian Minister of State for Rural Development by June 2010, 17,943,189 families had been employed under the MGNREGA.
Also on This Day:
1872: Tanguturi Prakasam, great lawyer, journalist, nationalist, politician, leader, social reformer and former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, was born at Kanuparthi village in Ongole district in Andhra Pradesh.
1942: Gorabai Katiya, freedom fighter, was shot by police while participating in a procession for freedom movement in Narsihapur.
1986: Shambhoo Anbhawane of Mumbai broke the world record of the longest duration typing marathon.
