LUCKNOW: The stark reality tumbled out as the financial year drew to a close on Friday.
Centre's flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), has recorded its lowest ever engagement of labourers from the SC/ST community in UP in 2022-23.
Rural development department data show that the percentage of labour days generated for SC community -- vis-a-vis overall employment generation under the scheme -- dropped from around 31% in 2021-22 to 29% in 2022-23, which was the lowest in the last five years. UP recorded 30.43% % of the SC employment under MNREGS in 2019-20, which went up to 31.18% in 2020-21 when pandemic triggered lock down brought economic activities to a grinding halt.
Likewise, ST engagement too went to its lowest level, plunging from 1.13% of the total in 2021-22 to barely 0.86% in 2022-23. ST accounted for 0.95% of the labourers engaged in MNREGS in 2018-19 and 2019-20, which increased to 0.99% in 2020-21. The SC and ST account for 21% and 2% of the total population in UP.
Significantly, the quantum of overall person days of employment generated under the scheme in UP came down by around 22% to 30.70 crore in comparison to 32.56 crore days in the previous fiscal. But this was still far more than 21.20 crore person days in 2018-19. The labour budget too came down from Rs 32 crore in 2021-22 to Rs 31 crore in 2022-23.
Experts believe that the downward trend may be indicative of the scheme turning "less attractive". Head of the economics department at Lucknow University Prof Manoj Agarwal said that the MNREGS should not be seen as a permanent solution to address the problem of rural employment. "As the economy grows various sections of the society start yearning for better employment opportunities," he said. Prof Agarwal insisted that the recent projection of decline in unemployment in UP should also be taken into account while interpreting the declining trend of labour engagement under the scheme.
As a matter of fact, the Centre has been seeking to make the scheme "more attractive" by increasing the wages under MNREGS. In the case of UP, the wage rate has been raised from Rs 213 in 2022-23 to Rs 230 in 2023-24. Prof Agarwal however maintained that the increase was just like a "gradual increase" in "minimum support price".
Notably, the engagement of women labourers shot up from 37.25% in 2021-22 to 37.62% which was the highest in the last six years. This was more than in the Covid year (2020-21) when women accounted for 33.57% of the total labour engaged under the scheme.
