How Replacing MNREGA With VB G RAM G Affect The Workers |
The MGNREGA, introduced in 2006, had emerged as the largest programme in the world for providing employment to the rural poor. Statistics show that within a short span of its first ten years, it helped generate 20 billion person-days of employment, benefitting 276 million workers, of which more than half were women.
Women admit that in 2009-10, this programme had helped provide employment of 60 days per household, but by 2014-15, the numbers had plummeted to 30-40 days per household, and the graph was only declining.
But even when the graph of workdays was declining, women remained the largest group of beneficiaries under the MGNREGS, making up over half of the total workforce. Statistics collected by different agencies show that in Tamil Nadu, women comprised 70-75 per cent of the workforce, while in Rajasthan, the figure was 70 per cent. In Kerala, elderly women comprised 80 per cent of the workforce. The reason for their doing so is interesting. They found working in MNREGA a more dignified form of employment because, as they put it, “we are working for our village panchayats and not taking up some odd job here and there.”
In the financial year 2023-24, women's participation in MNREGA had reached a ten-year high of approximately 58.8% nationally. Apart from the statutory requirement of over one-third of beneficiaries being women, other key factors for their participation included the fact that this scheme ensured they got equal wages, and because work proximity had been laid out to be within a 5 km radius of a worker’s home, it allowed for women to........