Rural Ministry seeks Rs 6,000 crore more for NREGS

NEW DELHI: The rural development ministry has asked for an additional allocation of Rs 6,000 crore for its flagship National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). This year’s budget has allocated Rs 48,000 crore to NREGS for FY2017-18. The scheme has already received Rs 47,499 crore so far this financial year.

The additional funds sought by the ministry in the third supplementary budget will help in meeting pending payments to the tune of Rs 3,700 crore. Part of this sum would be utilised to address the extra wage liability towards Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh which were declared drought states recently.

“Some part of the payment has to be made by the states but we are now releasing payments on a daily basis and next year should begin with very small due amount,” said Amarjeet Sinha, secretary, rural development ministry.


The two states along with Karnataka, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are eligible to get 50 extra days of work under the employment guarantee scheme. The average wages under the scheme will be increased by 2.7% during 2017-18.

A new committee comprising state secretaries has been formed to examine the recommendations made last year by the Mahendra Dev Committee on the wage calculation methodology to suggest changes in wage calculation.

Headed by Nagesh Singh, additional secretary, rural development ministry, the committee will consult states on changing the price index for calculating the wages for NREGS workers. The Mahendra Dev committee had suggested the use of CPI (rural) which provides a larger basket of goods for NREGS wages instead of the currently used CPI (agriculture labour).

The switch would have cost the government Rs 3,136 crore during 2016-17. On the suggestion of the finance ministry, the change in wage calculation was held back for further deliberations.

“We have to build a consensus with the states on the wage calculation method. The basis of the change in wages –– both states’ and NREGS has also to be the same thereafter,” Sinha said.

The employment guarantee scheme has set a target of constructing of 5 lakh farm ponds during 2017-18 as part of its drought proofing plan for villages.

Government is using space technology to geo-tag all NREGS assets and put them in public domain to bring greater transparency to the scheme.

So far, over 53 lakh assets under NREGS have been geo-tagged, according to rural development ministry data. The government wants to tag nearly 1.27 crore assets over the next few months.