Indian Union Budget 2021-22: The Rs 73,000-crore Budget allocation below MG-NREGS for FY22, a dip of 34.5% compared with FY21, will suffice to fund only about 260 crore individual days of work, going by the existing year’s typical day-to-day price of Rs 279.52 for each and every individual taking up job below the rural employment assure scheme.
A total of 322.11 crore individual days of work have been developed below the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MG-NREGS) so far in the existing fiscal with a total expenditure of Rs 89,664 crore.
Sources in the government stated Rs 73,000 crore allocated for 2021-22 would be sufficient to meet the complete demand for MG-NREGS jobs for the year which is forecast to have a regular monsoon and quite small effect of the pandemic on the economy and therefore, is anticipated to provide improved remunerative job possibilities for rural youth elsewhere.
However, JNU professor Himanshu believes that the allocation will fall brief considering that demand for work will nevertheless stay higher in the next fiscal.
Traditionally, rural youth get improved remuneration for their operates, even for agricultural operates, outdoors MG-NREGS, which is primarily a fallback choice. While day-to-day averages wages paid to a worker below MG-NREGS now stands at Rs 202 as per the Labour Bureau, a male common agricultural labourer got an typical wage of Rs 307.48 day-to-day in November 2020.
The 2020-21 fiscal is an exceptional one due to the pandemic. For 2020-21, the government had allocated Rs 61,500 crore (BE) to fund the MG-NREGS, but later raised the allocation in two tranches to Rs 1,11,500 crore for the demand-driven scheme.
Of the total, the Centre has so far released Rs 90,771.21 crore when total expenditure has been Rs 89,663.96 crore. Of the total expenditure, Rs 65,033.57 crore has been spent on wages, Rs 21,784.03 crore on material & skilled wages and Rs 2,846.37 crore on administrative costs. A total of 322.11 crore individual days have been developed so far.
In 2019-20, as per the MGNREGA dashboard, the Centre had released Rs 71,020.35 crore out of which total expenditure was Rs 68,261.32 crore. Of the total expenditure, Rs 48,846.74 crore was spent on wages, Rs 16,188.69 crore on material & skilled wages and Rs 3,225.88 crore on administrative costs.