A parliamentary standing committee on Tuesday urged the Union government to hike wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act to at least Rs 400 per day and increase the number of guaranteed working days under the scheme to at least 150 days.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, or MGNREGA, is a national social security scheme meant to guarantee at least 100 days of unskilled manual work in a year for every rural household.

Daily wages under MGNREGA currently range between Rs 241 and Rs 400 in different states.

The Standing Committee on Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, in its eighth report submitted to the Lok Sabha, said it was concerned that wages under MGNREGA were failing to keep up with inflation.

“Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme wages remain below subsistence levels, making it difficult for workers to sustain themselves,” the committee headed by Congress member Saptagiri Sankar Ulaka told the Union Ministry of Rural Development.

The base wage rates under the scheme should be revised to ensure that they align with current economic realities, the committee said. “At least Rs 400 per day should be provided as wages, as the current rates are inadequate to meet even basic daily expenses,” it added.

Without a fair wage, the scheme fails in its objective of providing economic security to rural workers, the report said.

“To address the economic disparities and to ensure that wages keep pace with inflation, the committee again strongly recommends that the base wage rates must be revised immediately and linked to an appropriate inflation index,” it added.

The report also flagged the persistent delays in disbursing the Union government’s share of funds under the wage and material components of the scheme in several states and Union territories.

It said that as per official figures as on February 15, funds to the tune of Rs 12,219.18 crore were pending in wages, and Rs 11,227.09 crore in material components. The total pending liabilities were Rs 23,446.27 crore, the panel said.

“This accounts for 27.26% of the current budget, meaning that more than one-fourth of the allocated funds will be used to clear previous years’ dues,” the standing committee said.

The committee also recommended carrying out a survey to understand the effectiveness of the scheme. “This survey should focus on worker satisfaction, wage delays, participation trends and financial irregularities within the scheme,” the report said.

Technological interventions

The committee further urged the Union Ministry of Rural Development to put on hold the recording of workers’ attendance under the scheme using the National Mobile Monitoring System until the “technical glitches” in the application were fully rectified.

The National Mobile Monitoring System, launched in May 2021, is a mobile application to capture real-time attendance and geotagged photographs of workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act at worksites, aiming to increase transparency and accountability.

“The committee note with concern that the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS), introduced to track attendance, has faced significant failures, particularly in offline mode,” the report said.

It said that rural areas suffered from poor network connectivity and added that a stable offline mode should be developed immediately to prevent wage denials caused by technical failures. Workers should not be penalised for system malfunctions, the report said.

Last month, the committee had said in a separate report that the Aadhaar-based payment system under the scheme must remain optional and suggested using alternative payment mechanisms to ensure that workers receive their wages.

“In several instances, workers have been wrongfully removed from the system due to discrepancies between their Aadhaar details and job card records,” the committee had noted.

The Centre made the Aadhaar-based payment system mandatory from January 1, 2024.

For workers to be paid under the system, their Aadhaar details have to be linked to their MGNREGA job cards and bank accounts. The Aadhaar details then need to be integrated with the database of the National Payments Corporation of India, after which the institutional identification number of the bank needs to be mapped on the National Payments Corporation of India database.

Workers have repeatedly claimed that their payments have been misdirected due to this system. Many have also said that their names have been deleted because of a mismatch between the details on their job cards and their Aadhaar cards.