Coronavirus impact | 83 lakh NREGA job cards issued since lockdown, maximum in Uttar Pradesh

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The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) social security scheme that guarantees 100 days' wage employment to rural households has emerged as the saviour during the economic crisis brought about by the coronavirus pandemic outbreak.

How do we know that? Since the time stringent coronavirus lockdown measures were imposed, the Centre has issued new NREGA job cards to more than 83 lakh rural households under the MNGREGA scheme. The highest number of these NREGA job guarantee cards were issued to households in Uttar Pradesh, reported The Indian Express.

The initial days of the coronavirus lockdown saw a mass migration of daily wage labourers and other migrant workers from the cities to their native villages, as the pandemic practically rendered them jobless.

Since then – from April 1 to September 3 – there has been an unprecedented surge in NREGA beneficiaries. The spike in the number of beneficiaries in this period has been higher than the annual surge recorded for the past seven years. There has been a 28.32 percent rise in the number of beneficiaries as the number of new job cards issued by the government in the last financial year stood at 64.70 lakh.

Of the over 83 lakh job cards issued this year, 21.09 lakh cards went to households in Uttar Pradesh, up from 7.72 lakh in 2019. Bihar saw the second most new job cards being issued at 11.22 lakh, followed by West Bengal at 6.82 lakh, Rajasthan at 6.58 lakh, and Madhya Pradesh at 5.56 lakh.

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