National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme named after Mahatma Gandhi was started with the aim of ensuring at least 100 days of employment in a year to economically backward and marginalized people in rural areas. Although the then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao proposed such a scheme in 1991, the law in this regard was passed by the Parliament in 2005. It was hailed as one of the biggest public welfare schemes of the UPA government.

Although the central government spent billions of rupees as part of the five-year plans and other projects, the visible benefits of this did not reach the bottom of society. Many members of Parliament raised the question of whether people would be willing to become a part of such a scheme for a small wage. However, when the scheme was implemented, we saw the common people, especially women, lining up to be the beneficiaries of the scheme even in the states such as Kerala. Many believe that the success of this scheme contributed to the second coming of the UPA government. Although mentally opposed to this scheme, the Modi government was forced to go ahead with this scheme as it was a successful scheme that helped the people. However, the Centre has drastically reduced the allocation for the employment guarantee scheme in this year's budget. The money granted for the scheme in this year's budget is the least in the last 17 years. The opposition alleged that the Centre did so to sabotage the scheme and eventually scrap it. The Union Finance Minister explained that apart from the Employment Guarantee Scheme, the Centre has started many other welfare schemes and the amount has been reduced as a part of helping those schemes.

Legal liability is what made this scheme successful. There is a provision that if the applicants for the employment guarantee scheme cannot be offered employment within the specified date, they should be given unemployment benefits instead. Officials could not sabotage the scheme because of this provision. It has also been stipulated that the Centre will provide the money for this. Such conditions made this project acceptable to the people. It is to be suspected that the Centre is trying to push the project towards euthanasia by withdrawing from all this. It was the recent statement made by Union Rural Development Minister Giriraj Singh that led to this doubt. The minister said that the states should also bear a share of the employment guarantee scheme wages. Such a proposal was earlier made at the beginning of this scheme.

Many schemes linked with state governments often get stopped midway. It was decided that the center itself should provide the share so that the job guarantee scheme does not come across a similar fate.