Modi govt. has made a mockery of MGNREGA by chronically underfunding it: Jairam Ramesh

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the Congress criticised the Narendra Modi-led government for ‘making a mockery’ of the scheme by ‘chronically underfunding’ it over the last 11 years of the BJP tenure at the Centre.

In a long post on X on Friday (September 5. 2025), Congress’s general secretary (communications) and former Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh said that the scheme stared at a very “uncertain future”.

The Finance Ministry’s regulations prohibit government schemes from spending more than 60% of the budgeted expenditure in the first half of a financial year. “The Ministry has blown through 60% of its budget within five months itself, leaving a question mark on what the future holds for crores of India’s rural families,” he said. The Hindu had reported on August 28 that ₹51,521 crore out of ₹86,000 crore earmarked in the 2025-26 Union Budget has already been spent, leaving ₹79 crore under the programme for the month of September.

‘Reflection of attempt to throttle scheme’

This latest crisis, Mr. Ramesh said, is not an aberration but a reflection of a larger attempt by the Modi government to throttle the MGNREGA. “MGNREGA has been chronically underfunded for the last eleven years, and the budget has stayed constant for the last three years despite high inflation. This makes a mockery of the scheme’s demand-driven vision and leaves crores of workers unable to secure work when they need it,” he said.

Pointing out various gaps in the implementation of the scheme, Mr. Ramesh said that payments to workers are routinely delayed way past the statutory period of 15 days without compensation; 20-30% of MGNREGA’s budget every year goes to clearing the previous year’s dues; MGNREGA wages have barely been raised in the last eleven years, resulting in a wider crisis of stagnant income; and the recent technological intervention to make the programme more transparent such as National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS) app and the Aadhaar-Based Payment System (ABPS) has been exclusionary. Estimates suggest, Mr. Ramesh said, that this has prevented over two crore workers from securing their legal right to work and payment.

He reiterated the Congress’s demands for a hike in the budget for MGNREGA and to ensure timely payment of wages. The party has also demanded that the minimum wage be kept at ₹400 per day which they said is critical to kickstart real income growth. Mr. Ramesh said there is a need for the constitution of a Standing Committee to set MGNREGA wages in the future and an immediate halt to the mandatory adoption of exclusionary technology such as ABPS and NMMS.