While Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman gave the miss to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in her speech while presenting the Union Budget 2024 in parliament on Tuesday, the new Narendra Modi government has allocated Rs 86,000 crore to the scheme.
This is the highest ever initial Budget Estimate allocation to the 100-day work scheme by the National Democratic Alliance government, which has at once been keen to phase United Progressive Alliance-era guarantee out. While Revised Estimates of spending have invariably been more, the government has been allocating far less through the years.
According to ‘The Wire’, Rs 86,000 crore may be the exact amount that the government quoted in its Revised Estimates for the financial year 2024 – an amount that was Rs 26,000 crores above its Budget Estimate of Rs 60,000 crore – but it is less than what was actually spent on the demand-driven scheme, now a right, in FY 2023. Rs 98,000 crore was spent on the scheme in FY’23.
This has implications as being a demand-driven scheme, a rise in demand for MNREGA is an important index of economic distress being faced by the most vulnerable.
The Economic Survey for FY’24, released a day ago, had sought to play down the role of people’s distress in the perpetual demand for jobs under the United Progressive Alliance-era scheme.
As is visible above, the scheme played a major role in the post-COVID crisis of jobs.
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