Few get 100 days under NREGA

The Centre might be thinking about raising the number of job days under the NREGA scheme, but none of the states have provided the guaranteed 100-days wage employment to all registered rural households in over three years of the landmark legislation.

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), the flagship rural development programme of the UPA government, was launched in February 2006 in 200 districts. It was later expanded to another 130 in 2007-08 and eventually extended to cover 593 districts. A total of 4,49,40,870 rural households were provided jobs under NREGA during 2008-09 but about 14.48% of them could get 100 days of employment.

The statistics reveal that 10.62% of the total 3,38,89,122 registered rural households in 2007-08 were provided 100 days of employment. During 2006-07, 2,09,83,491 households were provided jobs under the Act, but 10.29% of them could get 100 days of employment. As per the ministry’s assessment, the national average of the number of working days per household under NREGA was 48 in the last fiscal and it stood at 25 till May this year.