For all the carping criticism that it has endured ever since it was introduced by the Congressled United Progressive Alliance government, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has never been as beneficial for the people as now, in the season of the coronavirus pandemic.

The surge in facts and figures between 20 April, when work began for this fiscal and now, reaffirms the shattering impact of the lockdown in the season of the Covid-19 pandemic. This is the irony that is now so resonant in the echo chambers of authority. Devastating has been the impact on the migrant workers, predominantly from other states.

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It thus comes about that in the largely rural Chhattisgarh, 90 per cent of those who worked under the scheme last year have participated within a limited span of 40 days after 2020-21 unfolded. The data is testament to the endemic privation and the struggle for survival, one that has led to deaths among those who have trudged from one state to another on empty stomachs and in searing heat amidst the cry to be reunited with their families ~ an index to the government’s catastrophic failure to anticipate the problem.

Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to aver that the scheme, floated in Mahatma Gandhi’s name in Manmohan Singh’s time, is now the lifeline of rural India. Not that the trains earmarked for the shramiks across the country have not served as the lifeline of the nation during the current emergency; equally, this convenient mode of transportation to alleviate distress has contributed not a little to spike the virus count. The striking feature of the trend across the country is that more and more of the rural poor are seeking shelter under the umbrella of the rural job scheme to cope with the total loss of employment opportunities because of the pandemic and the lockdown.

Both have turned out to be equally devastating and have thus driven a predominantly rural country deeper into the cusp of poverty. Madhya Pradesh has already covered 53 per cent of “households” that worked last year, Karnataka 46 per cent, and Gujarat, the state that has been suffering acutely, 55 per cent. The data points to the degree of desperation. As it turns out, MGNREGS is the only option. The only disconcerting trend must be the widening gap between the number of persons or households that are working and the “persondays” thus generated.

Is it possible that not enough work is being generated? Is the administration following a rotation policy? Misgivings that not everybody is working every day and that people are being given work by turns are not wholly unfounded. To take care of “persondays”, it is imperative to ensure uniformity across the country. The demand for work could scarcely have been as acute as it is nationwide. With the recent pump-priming by the Centre, it is fervently to be hoped that payments will not be a victim of default, as often as not wilful.