New Delhi: In what could be the first major signal of waning popularity of the UPA government’s flagship rural job scheme NREGS, data compiled by the Rural Development Ministry show that the number of households seeking employment under the scheme witnessed a drastic decline in 2011-12 fiscal as compared to the previous year.
The data reveal that the number of households that availed jobs under NREGS declined by over 20 per cent during 2011-12 as compared to the previous fiscal.
Consequently, the total number of persondays of jobs created under the scheme also witnessed a drastic decline with the provisional figures indicating 37 per cent dip over the previous year.
The data reveal that a total of about 4.39 crore households came forward to work under the NREGS last fiscal as against 5.49 crore families the previous year.
As for the total number of persondays of jobs generated, the Ministry figures provisionally suggest a totalof 160.55 crore of persondays generated in 2011-12 as against 257.2 crore jobs generated the previous year.
This is the lowest number of households participating in the scheme since it was expanded across the country ahead of the 2009 Lok Sabha polls during 2008-09 fiscal.
Even the first year (2008-09) of nationwide implementation of the scheme witnessed more participation — 4.51 crore households — than the outgoing fiscal despite the natural challenge of lack of awareness about the scheme in about half of the over 600 districts across the country.
Sources in the Rural Development Ministry, however, sought to stress that the 2011-12 figures are provisional. They pointed that the ministry had directed the state governments to upload their last fiscal data by April 10. The ministry had now been extended the deadline till April 20, hoping to see improvement in the figures.
“Even if we factor in the trend of.data entry since the deadline was issued to the states, the final figures of 2011-12 will still be much below the previous fiscal (2010-11) figures in terms of household participation and the number of jobs provided,” said a source in Krishi Bhavan on Wednesday.
In this context, sources indicated that the total number of jobs created last fiscal may go upward of 195 crore persondays (as against 160.55 crore provisionally) in the final tally after the states complete reporting of the data. But this will still be much lower than the 216.32 crore jobs generated in 2008-09, the first year of nationwide implementation of the scheme. But they also conceed that the number of families that have availed jobs is unlikely to go up substantially and most likely be below five crore households figure as against over five crore family participation reported in 2009-10 and 2010-11
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