When Modi mocks NREGA, he ridicules the 80 million Indians contributing to the nation’s development

The prime minister feels the scheme is just about digging ditches. He would do better looking at government statistics and talking to the country's poor.

In this article I explore the real significance for the country's poor of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which has been publicly derided by the new Modi government.

Despite all the inimical noises made by the current government, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has survived. The budget recently allocated to it by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley confirms the government is not willing to axe the scheme – at least not this year. But does that rule out its erosion? Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s repeated denigration of the NREGA as a programme under which poor people dig ditches mocks the labours of the nearly 80 million people who toil under its aegis. By disparaging the scheme, he also ridicules his own government’s data. NREGA’s official website reveals that over 45% of all works taken up under the scheme entailed provision of rural sanitation. Construction of irrigation facilities for Dalit, adivasi and other impoverished farmers comprised 13% of the works, while land development works on the farms of poor landowners made up 9% of the total. Rural connectivity works made up a further 11%, while the creation of water conservation and water harvesting structures (presumably what the prime minister had in mind when he spoke of digging ditches) comprised 7%.

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