Steep reduction in employment through MGNREG scheme in Telangana

Work provided through the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation (MGNREG) scheme has hit its nadir in Telangana, if the numbers between April and September this year are any indication.

A report by LibTech India has found a sharp decline of 47.6% in the number of person days generated when compared to the same period last year in the State. The contraction is noteworthy, against the national decline of mere 10.4%, the report notes.

The number of unique households that worked under the scheme also fell drastically from 25.33 lakh last year to 19.94 lakh in the current, registering a 21.3% decrease which reflected lower participation. Average workdays per household dropped from 41 days to 27 days.

Medchal district recorded the worst collapse with 92.8% drop in the number of person days of employment, followed by Jogulamba Gadwal (72.6%), Kamareddy (68.7%) and Nizamabad (67.1%).

The decline was pronounced during April and May, the peak months for employment guarantee. The number of person days in April declined from 427.1 to 244.45 in April, and from 430.14 to 205.99 in May when compared with the previous year. This trend continued till September, with no corrective action.

On an average, each household earned ₹1,686 less, which accounts for a 19.4% fall in annual earnings. Had the same number of person days as last year been provided, households would have earned about ₹3,500 more, the report noted. This is despite the notified wage increase under MGNREG from ₹300 to ₹307 per day. The resultant wage loss at the State level amounts to ₹802.57 crore, which constitutes almost 63% of the wage loss at national level pegged at ₹1,274.21 crore, as per the report.

Not citing any specific reason for the trend, the report nevertheless noted that the State had recorded a net deletion of 5,000 job cards in the six-month duration. A total 78,000 workers were removed from the active registry while 46,000 were added, resulting in net removal of 32,000 workers.

“This pattern is significant because Telangana has already undergone large-scale deletions in the recent past. During the Aadhaar-Based Payment System (ABPS) mandate in 2022-23, more than 5.1 lakh jobcards were deleted in the State,” authors of the report Gayatri Saranya A. and Chakradhar Buddha noted.

Completion of Aadhaar seeding with job cards in Telangana stands at 48.5%, meaning that about 50 lakh workers have completed the process while approximately 53 lakh registered workers are yet to do so, the report noted and attributed the gap to migration and technical glitches such as device-level errors, application failures and weak network connectivity.

Citing field insights, the report stated there is an emerging perception among workers and civil society groups that the trend in Telangana, which stands out with its steep decline in person days, has something to do with the Indiramma housing benefits for which the active MGNREGA job cards become automatically eligible.

“We have not investigated this link or established causality, but the perception exists among workers and the timing overlap with continued job card contraction warrants closer examination,” the report said, while calling on the State government to restore predictable work allocation across the districts and initiate a job card reinstatement drive for correction of wrongful deletions.

From the Central government, the report sought revocation of mandatory Aadhaar requirement to access work and wages, and consultations with civil society organisations to design inclusion-oriented digital processes.