After a fall in April, the demand for work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MG-NREGS) has seen a rise again. According to an analysis of official data, more than 39 lakh households across the country availed the rural employment guarantee program in May this year as compared to the same month last year. Data obtained from the NREGA portal shows that 2.61 crore households worked under the scheme in May 2022, an increase of 39 lakh – or 17.39 per cent – from 2.22 crore in the same month last year.
The number of households availing NREGS is less as compared to May 2020, when migrants returned to their villages in view of the lockdown during the first wave of COVID-19, rising sharply to 3.30 crore. However, this epidemic is higher than the figure of 2.10 crore recorded in May 2019 in the pre-pandemic times. In April this year, 1.86 crore households took advantage of NREGA, which is 26 lakh – or 12.27 per cent less – than the number recorded in April last year.
Overall, out of 33 states and union territories for which comparable data is available, 21 states and union territories – Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Bihar, Kerala, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Nagaland, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Assam, Gujarat, Telangana, Puducherry, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Sikkim, Ladakh, Goa, Andaman & Nicobar and Lakshadweep – Number of households availing NREGA benefits during May 2022 as compared to the same month of last year (1.05 crore families) Combined, an increase of 68 lakhs was registered (1.73 crore families).
The remaining 12 states and union territories – Manipur, Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Meghalaya, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Tripura, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh – recorded a combined decline of 29 lakh in the number of households. Who availed the benefit of NREGA during May 2022 (88.19 lakh families) as compared to the same month (1.17 crore families) of last year.
Uttar Pradesh witnessed the highest increase in terms of absolute increase in the number of households availing NREGA benefits. In May this year, 26.28 lakh households in the state took advantage of NREGA, an increase of 17.38 lakh or 195 per cent over the same month last year. It is followed by Tamil Nadu, which registered a growth of 15.92 lakh – from 17.17 lakh in May last year to 33.10 lakh this year.
The highest decline of 9.10 lakh was recorded in Chhattisgarh, where 6.78 lakh households worked under NREGA as compared to 15.89 lakh in the same month last year. It is followed by Jharkhand where 6.62 lakh less households worked under NREGA in May 2022 (2.95 lakh) as compared to the same month (9.57 lakh) last year.
Under NREGA, every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual labor is entitled to at least 100 days of wage employment in a financial year.