100-Day Dharna @ Jantar Mantar

 

The legal provisions of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) are being persistently violated by the Government of India. NREGA Sangharch Morcha, in collaboration with other organisations and NREGA workers from across the country, organised a 100-Day Dharna from February 2023 at Jantar Mantar (Delhi) to protest the following issues:

1. App-based Attendance System: The usage of National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS) App has created more barriers to work. Ground reports suggest that workers have lost 50% of their wages owing to technical glitches in the app and many women mates -- worksite supervisors -- have had to take loans to get smartphones to use the app.

2. Inadequate Funding: The budgetary allocation for FY 2023-24 has been reduced to Rs. 60,00 crore, despite revised estimates for the current financial year coming in at Rs. 89,400 crore. Given this budget, the pending liabilities and 16 crore registered households, the persondays generated can only be 10 days.

3. Compulsory Aadhar-based payments: Until now, the NREGA payment system allowed two modes of wage payment: “account based” and “Aadhaar based”. The former is a plain bank transfer. The latter uses Aadhaar as a financial address and sends money to the person’s “last Aadhaar-linked account”. However, a majority of NREGA workers (approx. 53%) are still not eligible for such Aadhaar-based Payment System (ABPS).

NREGA Sangarsh Morcha's Charter of Demands to fully implement NREGA: English | Hindi

In addition to this NREGA Sangarsh Morcha organised an event for members of parliament at the Constitution Club of India on 14 March 2023 to appraise them of these issues being faced by NREGA workers across the country. The brief is available here.

These issues have resulted in various hardships for the NREGA workers across the countries. Some of their testimonials have been recorded here.