Mnrega

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment

Guarantee Scheme
• Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
(MGNREGA) is an Indian Labour Law and a social security measure which
was introduced in 2006 by the Government of India, under the UPA
government of PM Manmohan Singh. 

• The MGNREGA scheme aims at providing the rural poor, guaranteed

employment for 100 days with an objective of improving their livelihood,
social security, empowerment. 

•  MGNREGA’s reach has been growing every year since its inception and it
has provided nearly 90 crore rural households with job cards since 2006. 
 Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme

• Women are guaranteed one third of the jobs made available under the
MGNREGA.
• Another aim of MGNREGA is to create durable assets (such as roads,
canals, ponds and wells).
• Employment is to be provided within 5 km of an applicant's residence, and
minimum wages are to be paid.
• If work is not provided within 15 days of applying, applicants are entitled
to an unemployment allowance. That is, if the government fails to provide
employment, it has to provide certain unemployment allowances to those
people. Thus, employment under MGNREGA is a legal entitlement.
 Criticism of Mnrega
•  Ridiculously low wage rate: Currently, MGNREGA wage rates of 17 states
are less than the corresponding state minimum wages.  
• Insufficient budget allocation:
• Regular payment delays: 
• The banking visit :  The workers normally have to visit the banks more
than once to withdraw their wages.
• Faulty MIS data There is a growing pile of evidence on how real-time MIS
has made MGNREGA less transparent for workers, reduced accountability
of frontline functionaries and aided in centralisation of the programme. It
has also painted a picture that is far from the truth on the ground. One
needs to think about delinking the implementation of MGNREGA from
real-time MIS. The data can be uploaded in the MIS post-implementation.
It can still be a transaction-based MIS.
 MNREGA funds
• The MNREGA funds broadly has three components- wage, material and
administrative. The wage bill is borne completely by the centre and is
directly transferred to the workers’ bank accounts.
 SUGGESTIONS
• visit by commissioners,
• real-time attendance,
• an active Lokpal, social audit,
• a national mobile monitoring system that is connected to an app ensuring
workers reach the site and the work is being geotagged and to make
• WhatsApp groups.