Type: Schemes

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) faces a negative net balance of Rs. 8,686 crores, including payments due.

About MGNREGA

• It stands for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005.

• This is labour law and social security measure that aims to guarantee the ‘Right to Work’.
• The act was first proposed in 1991 by P.V. Narasimha Rao.

The objectives of the MGNREGA are:

• To enhance the livelihood security of the rural poor by generating wage employment opportunities.
• To create a rural asset base that would enhance productive ways of employment, augment and sustain a rural household income.

Features of MGNREGA

• MGNREGA is unique in not only ensuring at least 100 days of employment to the willing unskilled workers, but also in ensuring an enforceable commitment on the implementing machinery i.e., the State Governments, and providing a bargaining power to the labourers.
• The failure of provision for employment within 15 days of the receipt of job application from a prospective household will result in the payment of unemployment allowance to the job seekers.
• Employment is to be provided within 5 km of an applicant’s residence, and minimum wages are to be paid.
• Thus, employment under MGNREGA is a legal entitlement.

News: MGNREGS runs out of fund

• The MGNREGS has run out of funds halfway through the financial year.
• Supplementary budgetary allocations will not come until the next Parliamentary session begins.

Implications on laborers

• Delayed payment: Due to this, payments for MGNREGA workers as well as material costs will be delayed, unless States dip into their own funds.
• Livelihood loss: MGNREGA data shows that 13% of households who demanded work under the scheme were not provided work.
• Halt of work: Many workers are simply turned away by officials when they demand work, without their demand being registered at all.
• Fall in demands: This has led to stop the generation of work. There is an artificial squeezing of demand.

Why has MGNREGS acquired so much importance?

• The MGNREGA, a demand-driven scheme, has provided many returnees relief during the covid imposed a lockdown for a year.
• During last year’s COVID-19 lockdown it has provided a critical lifeline for a record 11 crore workers.

Try this PYQ:

Q. Which principle among the following was added to the Directive Principles of State Policy by the 42^nd Amendment to the constitution?

(a) Equal pay for equal work for both men and women

(b) Participation of workers in the management of industries

(c) Right to work, education and public assistance

(d) Securing living wage and human conditions of work to workers

 

 

Post your answers here.

Also read:

[Burning Issue] Reorienting MGNREGA in times of COVID

UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

The PM has launched the second phase of the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban and Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation.

What are the missions?

[A] Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0

The Mission will focus on ensuring complete access to sanitation facilities to serve additional populations migrating from rural to urban areas in search of employment and better opportunities over the next 5 years.

• Complete liquid waste management in cities in less than 1 lakh population to ensure that all wastewater is safely contained, collected, transported, and treated so that no wastewater pollutes our water bodies.
• Source segregation- Under Sustainable Solid Waste Management, greater emphasis will be on source segregation.
• Material Recovery Facilities and waste processing facilities will be set up, with a focus on phasing out single-use plastic.
• Construction & demolition waste processing facilities will be set up.
• Mechanical sweepers deployed in National Clean Air Programme cities and in cities with more than 5 lakh population.
• Remediation of all legacy dumpsites will be another key component of the Mission.

[B] AMRUT 2.0

• Water management: It will build upon the progress of AMRUT to address water needs, rejuvenate water bodies, better manage aquifers, reuse treated wastewater, thereby promoting circular economy of water.
• Water supply: It would provide100% coverage of water supply to all households in around 4,700 ULBs.
• Sewerage: It will provide 100% coverage of sewerage and septage in 500 AMRUT cities.
• Rejuvenation of water bodies and urban aquifer management: It will be undertaken to augment sustainable fresh water supply.
• Recycle and reuse of treated wastewater: It is expected to cater to 20% of total water needs of the cities and 40% of industrial demand.
• Pey Jal Survekshan: It will be conducted in cities to ascertain equitable distribution of water, reuse of wastewater and mapping of water bodies.

Back2Basics:

All about the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan

UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

The existing Mid-Day Meal scheme, which provides hot meals to students, has been renamed as the National Scheme for PM Poshan Shakti Nirman.

Key propositions in the PM POSHAN Scheme

• Supplementary nutrition: The new scheme has a provision for supplementary nutrition for children in aspirational districts and those with high prevalence of anaemia.
• States to decide diet: It essentially does away with the restriction on the part of the Centre to provide funds only for wheat, rice, pulses and vegetables. Currently, if a state decides to add any component like milk or eggs to the menu, the Centre does not bear the additional cost. Now that restriction has been lifted.
• Nutri-gardens: They will be developed in schools to give children “firsthand experience with nature and gardening”.
• Women and FPOs: To promote vocal for local, women self-help groups and farmer producer organisations will be encouraged to provide a fillip to locally grown traditional food items.
• Social Audit: The scheme also plans “inspection” by students of colleges and universities for ground-level execution.
• Tithi-Bhojan: Communities would also be encouraged to provide the children food at festivals etc, while cooking festivals to encourage local cuisines are also envisaged.
• DBTs to school: In other procedural changes meant to promote transparency and reduce leakages, States will be asked to do direct benefit cash transfers of cooking costs to individual school accounts, and honorarium amounts to the bank accounts of cooks and helpers.
• Holistic nutrition: The rebranded scheme aims to focus on “holistic nutrition” goals. Use of locally grown traditional foods will be encouraged, along with school nutrition gardens.

About the Mid-Day Meal Scheme

• The Midday Meal Scheme is a school meal program designed to better the nutritional standing of school-age children nationwide.
• It was launched in the year 1995.
• It supplies free lunches on working days for children in primary and upper primary classes in:

1. Government, government aided, local body schools
2. Education Guarantee Scheme, and alternate innovative education centres,
3. Madarsa and Maqtabs supported under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, and
4. National Child Labour Project schools run by the ministry of labour

• The Scheme has a legal backing under the National Food Security Act, 2013.

Objective:

To enhance the enrolment, retention and attendance and simultaneously improve nutritional levels among school going children studying in Classes I to VIII

History of the scheme

• In 1925, a Mid Day Meal Programme was introduced for disadvantaged children in Madras Municipal Corporation.
• By the mid-1980s three States viz. Gujarat, Kerala and Tamil Nadu and the UT of Pondicherry had universalized a same scheme with their own resources for children studying at the primary stage.
• In 2001, the Supreme Court asked all state governments to begin this programme in their schools within 6 months.

Calorie approach

• Primary (1-5) and upper primary (6-8) schoolchildren are currently entitled to 100 grams and 150 grams of food grains per working day each.
• The calorific value of a mid-day meal at various stages has been fixed at a minimum:

Impact created by the Scheme

• The MDM Scheme has many potential benefits: attracting children from disadvantaged sections (especially girls, Dalits and Adivasis) to school, improving regularity, nutritional benefits, socialisation benefits and benefits to women are some that have been highlighted.
• Apart from nutrition, this scheme has been miraculous. Mothers who first used to interrupt their work to feed their children at home, now no longer need to do so.

Issues with the Scheme

• Discrimination: Caste-based discrimination continues to occur in the serving of food, though the government seems unwilling to acknowledge this.
• Leakages: The scheme has been subjected to leakages similar to the Public Distribution System.
• Unhealthy and unhygienic: There have been cases of eating pesticide-contaminated mid-day meals leading to food poisoning.

Try this PYQ:

Which of the following can be said to be essentially the parts of Inclusive Governance?

1. Permitting the Non-Banking Financial Companies to do banking
2. Establishing effective District Planning Committees in all the districts
3. Increasing government spending on public health
4. Strengthening the Mid-day Meal Scheme

Select the correct answer using the codes given below:

(a) 1 and 2 only

(b) 3 and 4 only

(c) 2, 3 and 4 only

(d) 1, 2, 3 and 4

 

Post your answers.

UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)