Jharkhand Affairs
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has come to a great help to provide employment opportunities to the rural population of Jharkhand at a time when the economy of the country has been badly affected by Covid-19.
The ground assessment has confirmed that during the lockdown when Jharkhand witnessed a mass reverse Migration, the job loss on national level; MGNREGA proved crucial to financially sustain the poor rural Population.
So far in fiscal year 2021-2022 corresponding with the second and lethal wave of Covid 19, the Jharkhand government has provided job cards to 33,000 families that will benefit 51,000 people. So far 228 lakh man-days have been created with 13.80 lakh people getting EMPLOYMENT out of different MGNREGA schemes. To locally generate employment opportunities for job seekers under MGNREGA scheme District Administration and rural development department have been asked to start at least five to six construction works at each village.
The has further directed that rural works can be selected under different schemes like Nilambar-Pitambar Jal Samridhi Yojana, Birsa Harti Gram Yojana, Veer Poto Ho Khel Yojana, Didi Badi Yojana and others. Schemes related to water conservation and forestations too have been added under MGNREGA.
So far, 47,242 schemes have been completed and the work is under progress in 9.42 lakh schemes.
Notably, 81 per cent of the total allotted budget has been spent on schemes related to natural resource conservation.
Currently, <a href="https://exam.pscnotes.com/Agriculture-notes-for-state-psc-exams”>Agriculture related schemes constitute 94.33 per cent of the total schemes approved under MGNREGA.
In fact the Jharkhand Government realised that during tough times like this MGNREGA can be the life saver if schemes are properly managed. In the previous fiscal year over 14 lakh new job cards were issued when there was a nationwide lockdown. Similarly, 11 crore man-days were created under MGNREGA. The result remained satisfactory as almost all households got jobs for a minimum of 46 days whereas 3.56 per cent of the total households got full 100 days jobs.