Context: Recently a government panel, appointed to examine the contours of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), has recommended a complete overhaul of the scheme to link employment generation efforts with asset creation, largely concentrated in 2,500 water-deficient and 1,000 poverty-ridden blocks of the total 7,245 blocks.
About the Panel
- The head of the panel was former rural development secretary Amarjeet Sinha.
- The panel’s mandate was
- to study the factors behind the demand for MGNREGA work,
- inter-state variations and the composition of work.
- to recommend restructuring the demand-based programme MGNREGA.
Recommendations of the Panel
- Link the rural employment scheme with asset creation in the poorest blocks of India.
- 70% of the MGNREGA funds should be channelised in about 49% of the blocks, including 2,500 water-deficient blocks and 1,000 poverty-ridden blocks.
- The remaining 30% of the MGNREGA funds, as per the committee’s recommendation, be earmarked for the rest of the state.
- The “one size fits all” approach of the programme to be changed to a more targeted approach.
- Employment generation under the scheme should be linked to creating assets to replenish water bodies in these 3,500 blocks.
Yes. MGNREGS is a one of the key opener program in rural development in the sense of poverty alleviation and seasonal unemployment eradication and rural asset creation. But it needs to change to fulfill the local needs in the path of prosperity to use human resource as assets to build our nation in emarging situations