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).
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.
Issues with the NMMS App
The National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS) App is used to record workers’ attendance at worksites, by uploading geotagged photographs twice a day. It was made mandatory across all worksites as of 1 January 2023. However, due to server errors and technical glitches, the NMMS app does not function and the consequence is borne solely by the workers, wherein their attendance is not registered and work is not recorded despite having completed the work assigned to them (one such case is discussed here).
Further, the order issued by MoRD mandating NMMS and discontinuing “manual attendance” is a clear violation of the NREGA Act as well as the workers’ right to access and verify records at the worksite on a daily basis. It undermines transparency since physical muster rolls are the only documentary proof that workers have of having completed their assigned work. The NMMS app also makes wage payments a function of time-rate, thereby violating the mandate under the Act which clearly provides that MGNREGA workers must be paid on a piece-rate basis. These issues are compounded by technical glitches such as non-recognition of certain faces and non-accessibility of redressal mechanisms.
These issues have been discussed in detail in our NMMS Factsheet.
The GoI has not addressed these issues and the Union Minister for Rural Development, Giriraj Singh went so far as to deny having received any complaints regarding the same. NREGA Sangharsh Morcha has sought to refute these allegations in its response (available here).
Issues with ABPS
The Ministry of Rural Development made the Aadhar-Based Payment System compulsory from 1 February 2023. ABPS uses Aadhaar as a financial address and sends money to the person’s “last Aadhaar-linked account”. This requires the worker’s job card and bank account be seeded with Aadhaar and to be connected to the NPCI mapper (which requires meeting stringent KYC/e-KYC requirements, resolving possible inconsistencies between the Aadhaar database and the bank account, etc.). This has resulted in majority of NREGA workers not being eligible for ABPS, additional burden on workers to comply with the system and in certain cases, workers' names being deleted from muster rolls (one such case is discussed here).
Explainer on ABPS by Prof. Jean Dreze:
Issues with Budget Allocation for NREGA in FY 2023-24
The allocation for NREGA announced in the budget 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. This is an attack on the peoples’ right to work as mandated under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. In response, NREGA workers around the country hit the road on NREGA Diwas (February 2) to protest against budget cuts and gathered in Delhi to protest for 100 days starting from 6 February 2023 under the banner of NREGA Sangharsh Morcha.
Issues faced by NREGA workers in West Bengal
Last fund transfer order to NREGA workers in West Bengal was released on 26 December 2021 and no payment order has been released after that. Consequently, NREGA workers in the state have not been paid wages for over a year. The Centre has withheld the release of over Rs 7,500 crore MGNREGA funds to the state, out of which pending wages are a total of INR 2762 crores. In addition, there was a shutdown of NREGA work in the state for FY 22-23. Only individual works like PMAY were undertaken by workers for which, too, wages are still pending.
Details of the issue and the workers' demands: WB NREGA Workers' Issues
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