NEW DELHI: Amid the outcry over the reduction in allocation to Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), the government has said that the overall allocation to rural development other than MNREGS has gone up by Rs 40,000 crore.
Finance Secretary TV Somanathan, while speaking to this newspaper, said two rural schemes – rural housing and rural drinking water scheme – have got an additional allocation of Rs 40,000 crore. These schemes also create jobs, and these are the same kind of labour intensive, small civil works. These two (schemes) together will actually have an influence in creating productive jobs, which will offset the demand for unemployment-based MNREGS,” he said.
This money is going into the same catchment area where MNREGS is implemented, he reiterated. The government has reduced the allocation to MNREGS to Rs 60,000 crore for FY24 compared to Rs 73,000 crore budgeted for FY23. This was later revised upwards by Rs 17,000 crore.
In the Budget 2023-24, the government has increased the rural housing allocation to Rs 54,000 crore from Rs 20,000 crore budgeted for FY23. However, the hike is smaller compared to the revised estimate of Rs 48,000 crore. For Jal Jeevan scheme, the allocation has been increased from Rs 55,000 crore budgeted forFY23 to Rs 65,000 crore in FY24.
The finance secretary further said the economy is doing much better now than when the peak levels of MNREGS demand were seen in 2020. “As the economy normalises, we expect the MNREGS demands to be at 2018-19 levels,” he said.
“Taking both these things into account, I think this is a good initial estimate. However, this is a demand based scheme, and if the proven demand is higher than that, we will revise it during the year at the revised estimate stage,” said Somanathan.