The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which offers a special job scheme to the migrant workers in India is facing a rapid decline in its demand. MGNREGS focuses on providing jobs to the daily wage workers of India in the rural areas.

In the first five months of this year, MGNREGS has completed 65% of the annual target. However, since July the demand for these jobs has rapidly fallen. As per the Union Rural Development Ministry, 62.06 million needed jobs under this policy in June. This number declined to 42.57 million by July, and further came down to 31.44 million in August. By September’s first week only 11 million people demanded jobs under the scheme.

Jugal Kishore Mohapatra- former rural development secretary gave several reasons for this decline in demands. He said that because of the stumbling re-opening of various economic sectors millions of workers have returned to the cities in search of more remunerative jobs. The 50,000-crore special package offer for the migrant workers have also influenced them to shift to big cities for high-paying job opportunities. Another reason might be the bumper Kharif crop sowing season that made these daily wage workers shift to the urban areas.

Between the months of April-June, the government had imposed strict lockdown restrictions due to which millions of migrant workers returned to their homes. Out of these labourers, only 60% of them constitute for skilled construction workers, while the rest 40% of them were unskilled.

The 50,000-crore special scheme for migrant workers was to offer jobs to these people in at least 116 districts in 6 states of the country, with each district having approximately 25,000 migrant workers returning to cities.

Since the lockdown, the government had expected a rise in the demand for rural jobs following the return of the migrant workers. Due to which, the Union Government had added Rs.40,000 crore to the annual budget of MGNREGS making it a total of 1,05 lakh crore-the highest ever budget.

Apart from this, the government had also focused on elevating the target of creating 3 billion person-days of work in 2020-21 under MGNREGS. The demand did increase in the months of May and June as a result of the return of the migrant workers because of the lockdown.

Mohapatra also said – “It is indeed a good sign that people have found better jobs. After all, MGNREGS is used only for distress purposes. But the rural job demand will grow in the winter.” He believes the government is expecting a rise in this demand again in the upcoming months due to the lack of agricultural jobs in the winter season and the rising cases of Covid-19 in metropolitan cities and other urban areas.