Mysuru: The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) which was expected to provide a ray of hope to people in drought-hit areas by providing them employment, has failed in delivering the goods in the Old Mysuru region.
Jobs under MNREGS are need-based or demand-based, and generally earn workers a lesser wage than those in agriculture and in the construction sector. But due to the severity of the drought, as many as 14,13,429 people demanded jobs this year in the state and only 3,43,556 of them could be provided employment-not even a quarter.
In the CM’s home district, Mysuru, 40,172 people demanded jobs and only 9,747 of them got work. In Chamarajnagar, 35,281 people demanded jobs and only 5766 finally got them. In Kodagu, 3,368 demanded jobs and 1,175 got them while in Mandya, 24,366 demanded jobs but only 4163 were lucky.
Even in places like Kalaburagi district, where the temperature has crossed 40 degrees and people are said to be migrating to places like Bengaluru, 59,311 people demanded jobs but only 18,442 were provided work. But the officials claim that although they have offered almost the number of jobs demanded, people accept less jobs. The demand for jobs is less as people consider them less lucrative, the officials claimed.
The workers get Rs 224 as wages per day under MGNREGS whereas they can earn Rs 310 per day by working as agricultural labourers and over Rs 400 if they work in the construction sector.
But, due to drought, the demand for jobs has increased so much that in Mysuru alone, since April, 80,902 man days of work has been generated (one day’s work by one man is one man day). During the same period in 2015-16, only 5,512 man days of work was generated.
