HAS THE next batch of work been sanctioned?” asks Ram Ratan from a distance, sitting amid the sweating crowd waiting in silence on a humid July afternoon at the panchayat office of Dhurala village in Haryana’s Kurukshetra district. As always, he is dressed in neatly ironed trousers, shirt and sandals. With a post-graduate degree in psychology, he is among the most qualified youths in the village. The official responds, “Yes. We are in talks with the irrigation department about cleaning and de-silting a canal and with the Indian Railways about clearing the tracks.” The news pacifies the crowd, including Ratan, waiting eagerly for more work under the country’s largest public wage programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, popularly known by its acronym MGNREGA. The programme, implemented in 691 of the country’s 739 districts, is in fact dubbed the world’s largest state-sponsored job-scheme to eradicate poverty.
As per its preamble, MGNREGA aims to enhance the livelihood security of rural households by guaranteeing them “100 days of unskilled manual work” every financial year. At least 75 per cent of the total works must be related to water conservation, the Act mandates.
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