NEW DELHI: The rural development ministry is planning to promote climate resilient structures -- to be developed under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) -- with the launch of a pilot project to train field workers, an official said on Thursday.
The move is aimed at strengthening the planning of climate resilient works and help India become a net-zero carbon emission country in the coming years.
It will also help the community to make smart decisions to mitigate the effect of change in the environment, the official said.
"Currently on a pilot basis, field functionaries are being trained on how to plan for a climate resilient structure," the official said.
The official also said that Geographic Information System (GIS)-based planning at gram panchayat level is now an integral part of the planning process under the MNREGA.
This kind of planning will help optimise the resources and employ scientific ways to monitor works.
The GIS-based plan will support proper treatment of watersheds and help in water conservation and treatment of degraded soil.
GeoMGNREGA is another effort of the ministry under which it will ensure that the entire construction work - before, during, and after -- is geo-tagged.
The move is already bringing greater transparency and higher visibility to the scheme, the official said.
The official said that this move will be scaled up to monitor construction of assets at sub-activity level for closer scrutiny.
MNREGA has reached a new milestone by geotagging crores of assets and putting them in public domain, the official said.
The process of geotagging is still underway and will complete when all assets under the MGNREGA are geotagged.
Special focus is being given to geotag natural resource management works especially the water-related works.
The unique exercise is being implemented in association with National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), ISRO, and the National Informatics Centre.
Further, construction of bio gas plants has also been started under the MGNREGA to help achieve carbon neutrality.
MGNREGA is aimed at enhancing livelihood security of households in rural areas of the country by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work The Act covers all rural districts of the country.
There are 262 permissible works under the scheme, including those related to horticulture, food grain storage structure, farm pond, check-dam, trenches, cattle shed, goat shed, and rural connectivity.
During 2021-22 (as on March 27, 2022), a total of 83.82 lakh works were completed and 133.09 lakh works were under construction under MNREGA.
From 2014-15 to 2021-22 (till May 7), the number of works created under Natural Resource Management (NRM) stood at 211.26 lakh.
The number of works under all plantation, horticulture, farm pond, and check-dams stood at 53.93 lakh, 18.53 lakh, 25.34 lakh, and 5.94 lakh respectively.
The number of works under rural connectivity, soak pit, cattle shed, and trenches stood at 32.85 lakh, 23.66 lakh, 11.51 lakh, and 6.06 lakh respectively during the same period.
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