The Mamata Banerjee government has asked all the departments and the district magistrates to focus on generating employment opportunities for the MGNREGA job card holders in the state with its own resources in the coming months.
The directive is an attempt to reduce distress in villages at a time when the Centre has frozen funds under the rural jobs scheme in Bengal.
In a letter to the secretaries of all the departments and the district magistrates, the secretary of the panchayat department said that the state government aimed to provide at least 50 days’ of wage employment to MGNREGA job card holders to “reduce the distress of the wage-seekers deprived due to non-implementation of Mahatma Gandhi NREGS in the state for the past few years”.
“During this Financial Year, only 40.49 lakh Job Card holders have been provided work through this initiative (till 30/09/24) and 2,152.58 lakh person days have been created. This coverage of Job Card holders is far from satisfactory as the state has nearly 2.56 crore Job Card holders eligible for rural employment,” reads the letter issued on October 4.
Sources said that the state government focused on providing wage employment to the job card holders as part of a larger strategy to portray the BJP as an “anti-Bengal party” and project the Mamata Banerjee government as a victim of the Centre’s
discriminatory politics.
“The strategy to hold the BJP responsible for the distress of rural people worked in our favour as we won 29 seats in this year’s Lok Sabha polls compared to 22 seats in 2019. Despite Bengal being a victim, our chief minister promised that the state would spend from its own coffers to provide 50 days’ work to villagers,” said a TMC MLA.
“That promise has to be delivered and that’s why the government is focusing on creating wage employment,” the source added.
The state government had planned to engage job card holders as unskilled labourers in the various development projects undertaken by state government departments.
For example, the plan was to engage job card holders in basic earthwork before laying a new road or groundwork in case of the construction of a building.
“Departments like the PWD, PHE, irrigation and panchayat that undertake such projects tried hard to engage job card holders from the start of this financial year keeping in mind that providing 50 days of work to a huge number of job card holders was difficult. But due to multiple reasons, the plan could not be implemented at the ground level,” said a senior official.
Sources said there were two reasons behind the state’s failure to give jobs to the maximum number of job card holders so far.
First, the departments could not launch most of the schemes in the first three months of the financial year as the Lok Sabha elections continued till early June.
Second, the cash-strapped state government didn’t have funds to initiate the required number of schemes.
Now, the government has decided to push the departments and districts to initiate schemes in the post-festive season so that most job card holders could be given work, said a senior official.
The state government also asked the authorities concerned to ensure that families headed by women and SC and ST households get priority as they have been hit the hardest ever since the Centre froze funds under the 100 days’ work scheme.
A section of the officials said that the state government wanted to secure jobs for villagers in a bid to prevent unrest in rural areas, particularly when ruling Trinamool was facing protests in urban areas over the RG Kar incident in the past two months.
“There is no such major agitation against the ruling party in rural areas. In the backdrop of the RG Kar incident, the ruling party would not like to face questions in rural areas too, which is the reason why efforts are on to secure jobs for the rural populace,” said a source.
