‘Club MGNREGS with agriculture’

• Two-day national seminar on the role of MGNREGS in poverty alleviation begins
• Lack of labourers for farm work affecting farmers: Chinna Reddy
• Farmers forced to pay wages on par with MGNREGS

Hyderabad: The MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) should be integrated with agriculture to alleviate the problems faced by the farmers due to the non-availability of labourers for farm work. This was felt at a two-day national seminar, organised by Department of Business Management, Osmania University (OU), and sponsored by Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR), on the role of MGNREGS in poverty alleviation.

The seminar focused on the dimensions affecting the implementation of MGNREGS and the reasons for varying performance across different states. It also emphasised on fixation of responsibility if the scheme was not effectively implemented and on the role of social audit. Chairing the seminar, former minister Chinna Reddy said that the farmers in the AP State were finding it hard to employ farm labourers as most of them were working under MGNREGS. Also, they were forced to pay wages on par with the employee guarantee scheme, thus putting additional burden on them.

A mechanism where half of the wages are provided by the farmer and the remaining by the government, for working under the supervision of the farmer should be worked out, he felt. “This would help both the farmer and the labourer and will also reduce the financial burden on the government,” he said.

The former minister informed that the government spent Rs 2 lakh crore at the national level and Rs 28 crore in the State during the last 7 years, since the MGNREGS was launched.