MGNREGA – Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act:
The full form of MGNREGA is Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act was initiated with the main objective of “enhancing livelihood security rural areas by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a current year, to every adult member volunteer to do usual and unskilled manual work”.
Features of MGNREGA:
- Applicable for all rural villages in every district in India.
- Every rural or tribal household has the authority to register under the MGNREGA.
- The job card will be issued to each and every member who registered MGNREGA, most probably the card reaches the member within 15 days from the date of registration.
- The card holder can approach the employment office by giving a group or individual application for the prospective registration.
- The village panchayat has authority to determine and assign the work under 8 permissible divisions.
- Moreover, other than village panchayats, no one else has the authority to propose the alternative work on behalf of the order passed under the guidelines of MGNREGA.
- In nature, this type of work should be assigned within the surrounding distance of 5 km.
- On the other hand, if the work is assigned beyond the work limit like 7 km far for the given area, the employer should pay 10% of minimum wages as the additional complementary charge.
- Both men and women are paid equally. And they have to pay within a fortnight.
- The average percentage of employees are women, for women they are given high priority.
Conclusion:
The central government has allocated more than Rs.72000 crores for this Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The main objective of MGNREGA is generating employment opportunities for agriculture labour during the lean season and cleaning the rural area by providing this work.