Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Friday (August 23, 2024) slammed the Centre over its handling of the MGNREGA, alleging that the present state of the scheme is "a living monument of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "betrayal" of rural India.
Mr. Kharge recalled that in 2005, on this day, the then Congress-led UPA government enacted the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) to ensure 'Right to Work' to crores of people in rural India.
In a post on social media account X, he said at present, there are 13.3 crore active workers who depend on the MGNREGA, despite low wages, abysmal work-days, and facing deletion of job cards.
In the guise of using technology and Aadhaar, the Modi government has deleted over seven crore workers' job cards, cutting these households off from MGNREGA work, the Congress president claimed.
This year's Budget allocation for the MGNREGA is just 1.78 per cent of the total budgetary allocation, which marks a 10-year low in the scheme's funding, he said.
The lower allocation by the Modi government contributes to artificially suppressing the demand for work under the scheme, he argued.
The Economic Survey has already laid the groundwork to justify the low allocation by claiming that the MGNREGA demand does not necessarily correlate with rural distress, Mr. Kharge said.
A recent parliamentary standing committee report has said that the daily wages paid under the MGNREGA are inadequate, he said.
For instance, since 2014, the daily wage rate for Uttar Pradesh has increased just 4 per cent per year, when inflation has been much higher than that, he pointed out.
"Today a labourer earns on an average a mere Rs 213 per day. The Congress is committed to provide Rs 400 per day as National Minimum Wage," he said.
Even though rural inflation is higher than urban inflation for 13 straight months, the Modi government's "rank apathy" towards rural poor continues, the Congress chief said.
"The present state of MGNREGA is a living monument of PM Modi's betrayal of rural India!" Mr. Kharge said.
