MGNREGS dues and migration, a year of tumult in Centre-State ties for Bengal

Two years on, West Bengal's MGNREGS job cardholders suffer due to Centre's fund stoppage.

December 26, 2023, marked two years since the Union government stopped funds under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) to West Bengal.

The last time the Centre had released funds was on December 26, 2021. With the stoppage of funds, the employment guarantee scheme in the State came to a complete halt affecting over two crore job cardholders. The Union government decided to stop payments for MGNREGS in the State by invoking Section 27 of the NREGA Act alleging widespread corruption. The Section points out that the Centre may order the stoppage of funds and institute appropriate remedial measures for its proper implementation within a reasonable period of time.

Two years is a long time for Centre to withhold funds to a job guarantee scheme and activists from NREGA Sangharsh Morcha have raised questions on what a “reasonable period of time” should be.

Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity (PBKMS) has approached the Calcutta High Court over denial of wages to lakhs of MGNREGS workers but despite several hearings, the matter is pending before the Court. Activists and workers’ unions of West Bengal admit that there might be some corruption in the implementation of the scheme but stopping funds for the entire State may not be a pragmatic solution when crores are dependent on 100 days’ work.

Indeed, denial of funds to Centrally sponsored programmes was the dominating political theme in West Bengal in 2023. Even as the freezing of funds played out in the political arena, it was the poor in the State who felt its impact, as a marked rise in migration to other States showed.  

About 103 passengers, mostly migrant workers from the State headed for work in the southern States, were among those killed in the horrific Odisha train accident on June 2, 2023. Similarly, almost all the 23 victims killed when an under-construction railway bridge collapsed in Mizoram’s Aizawl district, were from the State. These accidents are a reminder of the grave situation in the State where unemployment and migration have hit life in rural regions hard.