PM Modi re-engineered, reformed and cleaned up MGNREGS
With increased allocation, direct transfers, and removal of leakages, the NDA made it effective
Sanjaya Baru, former press adviser to prime minister (PM) Manmohan Singh, in his tell-all book The Accidental Prime Minister, wrote about the morning of September 26, 2007, when a newlyselected general secretary of the Congress, Rahul Gandhi, visited the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) with Sonia Gandhi’s political adviser Ahmed Patel. The latter handed over a statement to be issued by the PMO , which said that Gandhi had urged the PM to expand the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) to 500 districts. Baru protested since it wasn’t the tradition of the PMO to issue statements given out by visitors to the PM. Yet, by late evening, every media outlet was running the contents of the statement as a headline. Baru also noted the “Congress’s party obsession” to give the entire credit of MGNREGS to the Gandhi family.
These incidents underline the obsession of the Gandhi family with the ownership of MGNREGS. Sonia Gandhi recently wrote an article where she accused the National Democratic Alliance government of falling back on the scheme after first criticising it. But she forgets that it was the abysmal handling of MGNREGS along with a string of corruption charges that led to the Congress-led government’s undoing in 2014.
When this government came to power, MGNREGS was in a poor shape. It had the inherent power to be much more than the scheme that the Congress had envisaged. After understanding its problems, and the shoddy job that the previous government did in its execution, the PM declared MGNREGS as a living monument to the Congress government’s failures, but said that he would not let it die. Thus, the government re-engineered MGNREGS, fool-proofing it, pushing reforms, intertwining it with technology and making the feedback mechanism stronger. Riding on these reforms, this government revitalised MGNREGS.
The funds allocated to MGNREGS for this fiscal year, excluding the additional allocation of ~40,000 crore in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, was ~61,500 crore. This was larger than the combined budgetary allocation of ~60,000 crore during the last two years of the Congress (2012-13 and 2013-14). During the first tenure of the Modi government, ~2,64,864 crore was allocated to the scheme and the total expenditure was ~2,53,245 crore. On corroborating the yearly increase of budget allocation to programme during the first Modi government, one finds a 12.87% yearly increase in budget allocations. The rural job scheme is alive and kicking only because of this.
Today, 99% wages under MNREGS are being paid electronically against 37% in 2013-14. There was massive corruption in how work was being given out; only a fraction of wages were reaching the intended beneficiaries. It was not that the Congress government had not acknowledged the presence of this massive fund leakage. PM Manmohan Singh, in 2009, admitted to the leakage of funds, yet, over the next five years, he did little to plug this.
It was the late Rajiv Gandhi who said that of every rupee spent, only 15-17 paisa reached the beneficiary. Yet, despite being in power for many years, the Congress government failed to ensure that the taxpayers’ money did not end up in the pockets of spurious characters. Today, 400 schemes come under the Direct Benefit Transfer. Another famous-yet-abandoned child of the Congress was Aadhaar. The Modi government used it well and through the trinity of schemes — Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile (JAM) — plugged fund leakages.
Another big issue was the massive use of fake job cards under MGNREGS. In 2010, the Planning Commission after evaluating MGNREGS had spoken of delayed payments and mass-scale corruption. The Modi government went on a massive cleaning spree. In 2017, nearly 10 million fake MGNREGS job cards were found and stuck-off from the scheme. It is indeed confusing to find Sonia Gandhi accuse this government of not issuing job cards, when fake job cards proliferated under her party’s rule. It is pity that she accuses this government of delayed payment, when only 34% of payment was done on time during her regime.
In the Comptroller and Auditor General of India report (2007-12), it was mentioned that only 30% work under MGNREGS had been completed. Today, all the work is geotagged and target-driven approach towards MGNREGS has been given primacy. In the words of late Arun Jaitley: “Wage through MGNREGS will be through works that are more productive, asset creating and linked to agriculture and agri-related activities”.
By converging various aspects, almost 60% of the work helps in natural resource management. Another major reform by this government is the addition of individual beneficiary work; today, 67% of all work amunts to individual beneficiaries. Apart from creating sustainable livelihoods, it is this reform that will aid our fight against Covid as this work can be done while maintaining social distancing. Today, when a resolute Modi 2.0 government is fighting the virus and its various outcomes, the ~1,01,500 crore allocated for MGNREGS will help India navigate this temporary crisis.
The only reason why this government is using MGNREGS in its fight against Covid-19 is not because this government believes in the scheme’s political legacy that the Congress claims to own, but because we believe in the work done in reforming it and making it the reliable and powerful tool that it is today.