Jairam Ramesh
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has questioned the mandatory adoption of Aadhaar-based payment system under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGA) and said it has had a disastrous impact on the scheme. He asked the government to stop the practice and claimed that the names of around 8.5 million registered workers had been removed from the scheme.
Posting on X, Jairam Ramesh said the government should stop the ABPS system. He said that in January 2024, the Ministry of Rural Development made it mandatory for MNREGA to implement Aadhaar-based payment system (ABPS) across the country. To qualify for ABPS, workers must meet several conditions. For example, their Aadhaar should be linked to their employment card, the name on the Aadhaar should match the name on the employment card, and their bank account should be linked to the Aadhaar and mapped with the National Payments Corporation of India.
MGNREGA – the lifeline of India’s poorest communities – is being systematically strangled by the government of the non-biological Prime Minister.
Budget allocations have been cut relentlessly and wages have stagnated. Now, due to an unwise reliance on technology, pic.twitter.com/hq119FrdjM
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) October 26, 2024
“The names of 8.4 million workers were removed”
He claims that now, 10 months later, there is data showing the devastating impact of this policy change. Jairam Ramesh further said that as per an analysis of public data on the MNREGA portal by Lib Tech (a coalition of academicians and activists), 27.4% of all registered workers (670 million workers) and 4.2% of active workers (5.4 million workers) are not eligible for ABPS. What is more worrying is that 8.48 million workers registered under MNREGA between April and September this year found their names removed from the scheme.
He also said that issues related to ABPS and removal of names in this manner may affect the entire MNREGA. The Congress general secretary claimed that man-days generated under MNREGA (the total number of working days completed by people registered under the scheme in a financial year) fell by 16.6 per cent from last year.
Even after 8 months the problem still exists
He claimed that the ABPS was integrated with the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS). Both policies violate the right to work on demand and to be paid on time as guaranteed under MNREGA. These issues were raised by MNREGA workers from across the country at a public hearing held on February 14, 2024, in Lanka, Ghawar district, Jharkhand, during the Bharat Jodo Nyaya Yatra. Even eight months later, these issues remain.
Jairam Ramesh also made this request
Jairam Ramesh also said that this is a human, economic and institutional tragedy created by the government. The Ministry of Rural Development should immediately stop this insistence of ABPS and NMMS and the budget of MNREGA should also be increased and the daily wages of workers should also be increased.
