20.7 mn households seek MGNREGA work in Jan, 2.26% less than in December

But it is about 9.7% more than the pre-pandemic month of Jan 2020; meanwhile, activists flay slashing of MGNREGS budget, say it will cause wage payment delays, suppress work demand

Around 20.7 million households have sought work under the flagship MGNREGS in January 2023, which is about 9.69 per cent more than the pre-pandemic month of January 2020, but almost 11.38 per cent lower than the work demand of January 2021 and 21.41 per cent lower than that of January 2022, data furnished in the MGNREGS website showed.

Overall, sequentially (month-on-month), MGNREGA work demand in January 2023 was 2.26 per cent lower than in December 2022 and significantly lower than the highest monthly demand of FY23 seen in May 2022 (about 30.74 million households . The Centre has reduced allocation for the scheme in FY24 by almost 18 per cent over the Budget Estimate of FY23 (the drop is almost 33 per cent from the RE of FY23).

This, according to senior government officials, is based on the assumption that as economic activities improve across the country, work demand will come down. Also, being a demand-driven scheme, the budget can be topped up any time during the year. This has been done regularly in the past.

But civil society activists argue that slashing the MGNREGS budget will lead to (a) massive delays in wage payments, (b) suppression of work demand, and (c) lack of quality assets getting created. NREGA is a demand-driven law and demand for work must be satisfied, they said. 
 

Households demanding work under MGNREGA every year (In millions)

Year	April	May	June	July	August	September	October	November	December	January
2014-15	15.3	19.59	23.12	16.42	10.02	8.76	7.29	7.56	8.69	12.41
2015-16	11.51	16.42	19.29	15.42	13.17	13.65	13.53	13.57	18.79	22.35
2016-17	18.66	25.26	27.82	17.9	14.31	11.38	8.34	8.5	11.84	15.18
2017-18	17.75	25.7	26.66	17.32	12.88	10.75	11.7	11.23	13.32	15.6
2018-19	16.82	20.76	23.04	17.6	14.96	14.3	15.93	16.84	19.47	21.26
2019-20	21.05	24.7	25.43	18.35	14.59	14.26	12.91	15.2	17.03	18.87
2020-21	13.41	37.3	44.78	31.98	24.31	24.39	24.36	22.75	26.53	26.34
2021-22	26.18	26.58	33.97	31.34	24.66	24.02	20.46	20.62	24.03	23.36
2022-23*	23.26	30.74	31.67	20.43	15.97	16.73	15.5	18.55	21.18	20.7

Source: MGNREGA