Former Rural Development Minister CP Joshi flagged a number of problems in the implementation of MGNREGA (the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) scheme while campaigning in the Rajsamand constituency during the Rajasthan elections. He says that the present BJP-led government has killed the prestigious programme of the erstwhile UPA government. He claims that it has created problems for lakhs of people who depend on it.

Rajasthan was the hub of protests in the late 1990s demanding right to work and it has a history of implementing the scheme successfully.

Talking to BusinessLine , Joshi says the present scheme is just a shadow of what people like him had envisaged. Excerpts from the interview:

As Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Minister, you had tried to expand MGNREGA. How do you see its present status?

The basic idea of MGNREGA was that maximum funds would be allotted not for construction of any physical assets but for creating farmer-friendly infrastructure — such as ponds, irrigation facilities and rain water conservation models. Such measures helped a lot of individual farmers.

We spent more money on the labour component and less on material component. So, in the years between 2005 and 2014, crores of rural people benefited from the scheme.

But now, the Narendra Modi government has changed the rules. They want to spend more on material component and less on labour component. Because of this, people are not getting jobs under the scheme.

Why is the government doing this?

They do not care for the common people. They have even tampered with the provision that if somebody has applied for a job under the scheme, the government should register it and if he or she could not be given a job, then unemployment wages should be given.

That is the provision. Then, there is the provision in the Act on the importance of planning at the grass root level, which means the role of State governments is important. Being anti-federal, this government at the Centre has disrupted this provision too.

But why didn’t the Congress make this the major election issue in the State elections? Are you scared of losing farmers’ votes? There is a perception that farmers are against MGNREGA…

Congress president Rahul Gandhi was the most vocal politician against killing MGNREGA. Congress has protested against this. But, agreed, it was not the focus of the campaign. The reason is that the beneficiaries under the scheme are mostly unorganised workers.

That’s an area where we do not have organised unions. Wherever there are organised unions, number may be less but we have got the mileage.

Here, large numbers of people are under the scheme but there are no unions for them.

Wages are also pending for long…

We made a provision that every year, we will enhance wages according to the Consumer Price Index.

The fund flow will be decided on this. Keeping this in mind, UPA increased it every year.

But still the average wage is just above ₹200. Pendency too is high. The Centre has also restricted flow of funds. Employees cannot wait for months.

This is a sort of negative discouragement of the scheme. They are killing MGNREGA.

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