The Centre will likely roll out Aadhaar-linked face authentication of workers under the flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) next year to plug leakages, which officials estimate is as high as a third of the spending in the scheme.
Rampant misappropriation of funds allocated under the flagship scheme is one of the main triggers for the Centre to make a five-year low provision of Rs 60,000 crore in the FY24 Budget for the jobs programme. It will likely top up it with another Rs 30,000-40,000 crore as budget allocation has almost been fully utilised.
“If the face is not authenticated, the worker won’t receive any payment under the scheme,” the official said. The new measure, which will likely be rolled out sometime next year, would help curb corruption in the scheme, the official added.
Often it has been found that middlemen in many places collect the Aadhaar card from workers to mark their attendance under MGNREGS without the workers actually working. The middlemen, who also collect the debit cards of workers, apportion the NREGS wages deposited in the Aadhar-linked bank account of the workers.
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) uses face authentication as a process by which an Aadhaar number holder’s identity can be verified. A successful face authentication confirms that your physical face which is being scanned for verification matches the one which was captured at the time of enrolment when your Aadhaar number was generated. A successful face authentication confirms that you are who you claim to be.
The Centre has even stopped MNREGS fund flows to West Bengal since December 2021 due to allegations of corruption, including no trace of work after their competition, existing works fraudulently shown as MGNREGS works etc.
MGNREGS aims to provide at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household in rural areas of the country, whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work, mainly during off-seasons.
So far in FY24, 2.01 billion person days of work have been generated under the scheme. In FY23, 2.94 billion person days were generated compared to 3.63 billion in FY22 and a record 3.89 billion in FY21, the pandemic year.
According to official data, month-wise work demand has moderated from 33.7 million in June 2023 to 18.5 million in September and further to 17.5 million in October till the 27th of the month, indicating that people are finding other viable options for gainful employment.
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