[Marxistindia] Assault on Rural Work Guarantee Law

[news from the cpi(m)]

January 2, 2024

Press Statement

 

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the
following statement:

 

Assault on Rural Work Guarantee Law

 

The latest expression of the Modi government's active hostility towards the
demand based rural work guarantee law-the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural
Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) is the imposition of an AADHAR based
payment system (ABPS) the deadline of which expired on December 31,
snatching away the right to crores of workers.  Under the law, every rural
worker has the right to a job card and every job card holder has the right
to at least 100 days work. 

 

The first violation of the law by the central government is to divide job
card holders into eligible and non-eligible for ABPS. According to the
government,  of the 25.25 crore registered workers only 14.35 crores are
eligible, because they have done at least one day's work over the last three
years. But suppose a job card holder decides that she does need to work, on
a MNREGA site, even though she has not done so earlier,  now she cannot do
so since she has been declared ineligible. In other words over 10 crore
workers, who have every right to a job card under the law, have been
declared ineligible to get ABPS and therefore denied their right to work on
a MNREGA site. 

 

Even of the 14.35 crore so-called eligible job card holders, as many as 12.
7 per cent, around 1.8 crore workers,  do not have ABPS and will therefore
not be eligible to work in MNREGA. Earlier the government had imposed a
online registration system which given the poor connectivity in large parts
of rural India, resulted in workers presence at the worksite not being
accepted. They were and are being denied wages without online registration.

 

This is an outright assault on the law. MNREGA, regardless of its
inadequacies such as the limitation to 100 days, has proved to be a lifeline
for the rural poor, particularly at this time of high rural distress caused
by unemployment. The Modi government is using technology to attack a legal
entitlement. 

 

The Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) strongly condemns this illegal attack on
workers' rights as guaranteed by MNREGA and demands the withdrawal of
mandatory linkages to an AADHAR based payment system. 

 

 

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