Rural India sees 10% allocation hike
RURAL DEVELOPMENT SECRETARY NN SINHA SAID WITH MORE PEOPLE GOING BACK TO CITIES FOR JOBS, THE PRESSURE ON MNREGS WILL EASE
The Union government has hiked its allocation for rural India, with a 10% increase in funds earmarked for the rural development ministry’s annual budget for the upcoming financial year, as against the FY20-21 budget estimate. But the allocation falls short by ₹66,000 crore from the current financial year’s revised estimate, which got a disproportionate increase to tackle the Covid pandemic, and the lockdown of the economy.
Rural development and defence are the only two ministries that gave got more than ₹1 lakh crore in the past few years. The budget allocation for the rural development ministry has been hiked to ₹1.32 lakh crore for FY21-22 from ₹1.20 lakh crore in FY20-21. The revised estimates for FY20-21, however, had gone up to ₹1.97 lakh crore as the government rolled out two stimulus packages to provide jobs and social security during an unprecedented health emergency.
Rural development secretary NN Sinha said that the budget fits their expectations, and with more people going back to cities for jobs, the pressure on MNREGS, the rural job guarantee scheme, will ease.
His predecessor, Jugal Kishore Mohapatra, had a different view. “The 10% hike in budget is too little as rural livelihood will need much time to return to normal levels,” he said.
The national livelihood mission has got the sharpest hike of 48% in the FY21-22 budget vis-àvis the previous year. The livelihood programme has been earmarked ₹13,677 crore for FY21-22, as against ₹9,210 crore in FY20-21. The scheme is designed to help the rural poor to increase their household income by means other than agriculture. Rupees 1.12 lakh crore was spent for MGNREGS alone in FY20-21, as per the revised estimate. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman allocated ₹73,000 crore for the programme in FY21-22 — ₹11,500 crore higher than the last budget even, as it is ₹41,000 crore less than the revised estimate of this year. “It’s a demand-driven programme, and if we can properly utilise it, we can always get additional funds,” Sinha said.
Mohapatra, however, argued that “fund shortage in the middle of the year creates operational difficulties and since every year the MGNREGS expenses overshoot budget allocations, a higher allocation was needed”.
Similarly, the national social assistance programme, which contains pension for widows, the disabled and the elderly, and the Annapurna scheme of free foodgrains, got a meagre hike of ₹4 crore from the budget estimates of FY20-21. During the pandemic the government had especially allocated ₹31,000 crore to give financial assistance to rural women.
The popular Ujjwala Scheme, which gives subsidised cooking gas to rural women, has been further expanded. The scheme will now cater to 90 million households as against 80 million households earlier.
For the rural housing scheme, another popular social programme of the Narendra Modi government, allocation remains stagnant at ₹19,500 crores. The other flagship scheme to build rural roads has faced a cut from ₹19,500 crore in the union budget of FY20-21 to ₹15,000 crore in FY21-22. But Sinha said that unutilised fund with states, surplus balance, and the new budget, will provide a kitty of around ₹35,000 for building rural roads.
A senior Opposition leader said, “Overall the budget has been very disappointing. In the rural sector; the government has not allocated enough funds. We will now see the supplementary demand for grants turning into mini budgets.”