Ministers spar over NREGA

Ahead of the Union Budget, senior ministers of the UPA appear to be petitioning Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with claims and counter-claims over the performance of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Act (MNREGA). After finance minister P. Chidambaram apparently tried to impress upon the Prime Minister for cut in MNREGA budget, Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, in a letter to Dr Singh, has rebutted his colleague’s perception about the flagship scheme. “Last night you mentioned to me that FM has spoken to you about decline in employment being generated through MNREGA,” Mr Ramesh wrote in a letter to the Prime Minister in which he has given elaborate explanation to counter the claim of decline in employment. In another letter to the Prime Minister, Mr Ramesh notes “on more than one occasion agriculture minister (Sharad Pawar) and finance minister have spoken of the negative impact that MNREGA seems to be having on the availability of labour for agricultural operations. Mr Chidambaram, apparently faced with the task to cut down the fiscal deficit, is likely to curtail the budgetary support of the social sector schemes. In a bid to avoid the MNREGA becoming a victim of the cut in budgetary support, Mr Ramesh wrote to the Prime Minister that “the total person days generated at the end of December 2011 were around 150 crore, in contrast, the persondays upto December 2012 were around 153 crore”. He added that since the states are in the process of updating their data “the number (of jobs) may go up”. Mr Ramesh in his letter has countered the claims that women participation has gone down in the MNREGA. “Women persondays in 2011-12 as a proportion of total persondays was 49 per cent upto December 2011, which has gone up to 53 per cent,” Mr Ramesh mentioned in the letter. The rural development minister has further explained to the Prime Minister that the impact of the implementation of the MNREGA has largely been positive for the agricultural sector.