New Delhi: Poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh are among the five states that have reported the greatest number of workers’ names being deleted from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) list in the first six months of this fiscal, according to a report by non-profit LibTech India.
In its report titled ‘MGNREGS Implementation State: April-September 2023’, released Saturday, the organisation found that “net deletion of 80 lakh workers” across India took place between April and September 2023.
Net deletion is calculated based on the total number of workers deleted and new workers added during a period.
The data utilised for the analysis, LibTech India said, was sourced from the government’s MGNREGS portal as on 6 October, 2023.
The highest net deletion of workers in the country was in Uttar Pradesh at 35.57 lakh — 42.01 lakh were deleted and 6.43 lakh new workers were added.
Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh are among the states with a large number of workers under MGNREGS. In Madhya Pradesh — among the few states with close to 1.7 crore registered workers — the net deletion was 10.92 lakh workers (15.98 lakh deleted and 5.05 lakh added).
Madhya Pradesh was followed by Chhattisgarh (9.54 lakh names deleted), Rajasthan (7.72 lakh), Odisha (5.77 lakh) and West Bengal (5.55 lakh).
Poll-bound Telangana was among the few states and Union Territories that have reported an increase in the number of names added to the MGNREGS list this financial year, the report noted.
Maharashtra was another big state where more workers were issued MGNREGS job cards as against deletions from the list. Close to 4.6 lakh workers were added to the state’s list in the period while the names of 1.42 lakh were deleted, according to the report.
Chakradhar Buddha, a senior researcher with LibTech India who worked on the report, told ThePrint: “The number of deletions in just the first six months of the current financial year is very high. But the number will be much more if we consider the period starting from February this year, when the Aadhaar-Based Payment System (ABPS) was made mandatory for settlement of wages (the deadline for enabling this been extended to December-end).”
Buddha added: “According to the rural development ministry, 5.2 crore workers’ names were deleted in 2022-23. So, in the past 18 months, more than 6 crore workers’ names have been deleted. This is a huge number given that the demand for work has increased this year.”
Activists allege that the names of registered workers have been wrongly deleted, in some cases because their job cards were not linked to the ABPS, which the government is trying to implement across the country.
In essence, the deletion of a worker from the MGNREGS rolls means that the person is ineligible to work as he is no longer registered under the rural job programme. Under the scheme, every eligible household is given a job card, which entitles its willing adult members to 100 days of work a year.
The central government has, however, maintained that job card deletions were due to a range of issues.
In a written response to a question in the Lok Sabha in the monsoon session this year, rural development minister Giriraj Singh had said: “As such ‘system error’ is not a defined reason for the deletion of job cards… The various reasons for the deletion of job cards are given below: i. fake job card (incorrect job card) ii. duplicate job card iii. now, not willing to work iv. family shifted from gram panchayat permanently v. single person in job card and the person is expired.”
ThePrint has reached out to a spokesperson of the Union rural development ministry for an official comment on the report. It will be updated if and when a response is received.
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Surge in demand for work
Buddha said that there has been a 7.5 per cent drop in the total number of active workers in the MGNREGS list over the past one year.
A worker is considered an “active” worker if he or she worked even for a day in the last three financial years.
According to the LibTech India report, there were 15.49 crore active workers across India as on 6 October, 2022, but the number dropped to 14.33 crore this year on 6 October.
“The total number of active job cards experienced a 4.3 per cent reduction (in six months this fiscal as compared to the same period last year), decreasing from 10.16 crore to 9.72 crore…. These statistics indicate a significant contraction in the MGNREGA workforce, emphasising the need for a comprehensive analysis to identify the factors contributing to this decline and to formulate strategies for revitalising the programme’s participation,” the report read.
While activists have expressed concern over the deletion of workers’ names from the list, there has been a surge in demand for work across the country, especially in 14 states.
The number of person-days generated in the first six months of this fiscal, the report said, was more than the person-days generated in the corresponding period last year. ‘Person-days’ refers to the number of people working per day multiplied by the number of days worked.
According to the report, “Following a decline in person-days generated from 210 crore in the financial year 2021-22 to 172 crore (an 18 percent decrease), a modest increase occurred in the current financial year, reaching 188 crore (a 9 percent increase).”
The number of person-days in 2021-22 was high due to the impact of strict restrictions imposed during the Covid pandemic, which resulted in reverse migration of people.
“The generated person-days would have been even higher if workers whose names were wrongly deleted had been reinstated. In the past 18 months, over 6 crore workers’ names have been deleted from the list. The figures reflect the persistently high and growing demand for employment opportunities under MGNREGS,” Buddha said.
The MGNREGS, which was implemented in 2006, is a demand-based scheme. The LibTech India report said that there was an increase in person-days in 14 states.
“The biggest drops (in demand for work) were observed in West Bengal (99.5 per cent), Himachal Pradesh (28.6 per cent), and Madhya Pradesh (25.2 per cent), while Chhattisgarh (106.4 per cent), Jharkhand (75.6 per cent) and Tamil Nadu (67.4 per cent) experienced the highest rise,” report said.
Gangaram Paikra, president of Chaupal (Chaupal Gramin Vikas Prashikshan Evam Shodh Sansthan), a non-profit organisation that works in Chhattisgarh, said: “There can be multiple reasons for the increase in person-days generated in the state. One of the main reasons is that there has been a substantial increase in work on individual land under the MGNREGA.”
‘ABPS to blame’
On 30 January this year, the Union government issued an order making the Aadhaar-Based Payment System mandatory for the settling of MGNREGS wages in a bid to ensure “timely payment”.
Following protests by workers and the difficulty faced by states in its implementation, the government extended the deadline for ABPS implementation multiple times, the latest being 31 December, 2023.
Buddha said the government’s push for ABPS was one of the main reasons behind such large-scale deletion of workers’ names from the MGNREGS list.
“There are several issues at the grassroots-level when it comes to implementation of ABPS. These large-scale deletions are also because of it. In our analysis, we have found that a significant proportion of workers (job cards) are yet to be linked to the ABPS. The government plans to make it mandatory from next year, but if all workers are not under the ABPS, then people will be deprived of employment under the scheme,” said Buddha.
He added: “As per our finding, the percentage of workers eligible for payment through ABPS ranges from 27.1 per cent in Maharashtra to 97.2 per cent in Andhra Pradesh among all registered workers. There is a significant number of workers who are yet to be inked to the ABPS. The number is 43.6 per cent in Assam to 99.7 per cent in Kerala among active workers.”
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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