Budget cuts for the Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee scheme coupled with the administrative changes have resulted in reduced employment through the highly successful rural employment scheme in Telangana in the year 2021-22. Improvement in COVID-19 pandemic situation too has been a major factor.
Analysis of three years’ data related to the scheme’s expenditure in Telangana’s 32 districts has revealed that the expenditure was cut down by 10 % during last year when compared with the previous year, says the report from Libtech India, a study group of engineers and social scientists.
Expenditure on the scheme in Telangana was the highest in 2020-21 at ₹4643 crore which came down to ₹4087 crore in 2021-22, clocking almost 12 % reduction which in monetary terms amounted to ₹556 crore.
The drop becomes more significant in view of 3.3 % increase in the NREGS wage rate, the study notes. The wages which stood at ₹237 in 2019-20, were increased to ₹245 two years later, and it should have resulted in 3.4 % increased expenditure on wages, all the other factors remaining constant. Instead, the wage expenditure recorded a drop of 9 %.
Besides, the ratio of material and skilled wages component to the total wage expenditure has risen exponentially, from about 19 % in 2019-20 to almost 39 % in the subsequent year, and to 37 % in 2021-22. While the ratio stands well within the maximum cap of 40 %, it also signifies reduced expenditure on unskilled labour.
After a huge increase in the number of person days under the scheme in 2020-21, owing to the situation spawned by the COVID-19 pandemic, a dip was recorded in 2021-22. From 10.7 crore in 2019-20, the person days increased to 15.8 crore in 2020-21, only to drop to 14.6 crore in 2021-22. While the decline was around 7.6 % in 2021-22, it is still way higher than the pre-COVID times, the report noted.
While the dip in employment may be largely attributed to amelioration of COVID-19 situation, migration from State government’s website to that of the National Informatics Centre (NIC), among other factors, had an impact, as vouched by the accelerated dip in employment post the NIC migration in the last quarter.
Between April and December, 2021, the dip in employment had been only 5.8 %, which worsened to 21.1 % solely during January, 2022 and March, 2022, the report said.
Unmanageable workload on panchayat secretaries too has had its adverse impact on the timely payment of wages, it said.
District wise analysis showed that out of 32 districts, 23 showed a decline in employment, while nine recorded the other way round.
Rangareddy and Jagtial recorded highest dip in person days, at 28.2 % and 26.4 % respectively, while Jayashankar Bhupalapally recorded the highest increase at 25.3 % followed by Yadadri Bhuvanagiri at nine %.
