How mandating Aadhaar-based payment is pushing rural India into poverty, forcing migration

Manju Devi from Bihar is facing hardships over the past one year since her job card for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) was deleted.

The scheme under the MGNREG Act enables the rural population to access employment for 100 days in a year. The card entitles villagers to seek work with the government and earn wages guaranteed under the scheme.

However, now that her name is not listed, she cannot apply for work actively. She had hoped that her name would be restored over the months but that didn’t happen, the Muzaffarpur resident told Down To Earth. 

Her name was removed from the MGNREGS records after the central government mandated linking Aadhar cards with her bank account, according to the Aadhar Based Payment System (ABPS) introduced in January 2023. Devi has an Aadhaar card and is still looking for a reason for the deletion. 

Devi is not alone. As per the data shared by NREGA Sangharsh Morcha on December 27, 2023, 89 million, that is 34.8 per cent of the total registered workers, and 18 million, that is 12.7 per cent of the active workers, are still ineligible under the ABPS. 

Like Devi, these 89 million people will be unable to earn a livelihood through the scheme.

There are 256.9 million registered workers, out of which 143.3 million are categorised as active by the Union Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD). 

Devi said that with the source of income gone, she will have no other means of income and will be pushed towards poverty. “I used to earn about Rs 1,500-1,600 a month with MGNREGA work. We have been struggling to meet our financial needs for a year. My husband is a daily wager and has no fixed or reliable source of income,” she added.

The move by the central government has also impacted one of the objectives of the scheme — to prevent migration.

Archana, a resident of Asifabad district in Keramiri block of Telangana who also saw her job card recently deleted, said she was caught off guard from the development. 

“When I inquired, the reason cited was ‘person shifted to a new family’. I am puzzled by the deletion reason as I have been living with my husband for years and the reason cited is not applicable to me,” she said.

Without her job card, she is caught between a rock and a hard place, she said. “I’m left with two choices –  to migrate to Hyderabad with my husband, leaving our children behind in the village, or take them along and potentially disrupt their education. The dilemma is weighing heavily on me and has left me feeling lost and unsure about the best course of action.”

Uncertainty aside, the deletion is going to add to the family’s financial burden, she added. “We face the prospect of losing about Rs 15,000-20,000 per year, a significant amount for our household,” she said. 

Like these two women, many others across the country are either still searching for the reason their job cards were deleted despite having the documents, or are puzzled by explanations provided by the officials and looking for ways to justify their candidature.

Enforcing ABPS as a requirement in MGNREGA is denying their fundamental right to work, as guaranteed by legal standards, said Chakradhar Buddha, researcher at LibTech India, a platform for social workers, engineers and social scientists working towards improvement of public service delivery. 

“Apart from migration, this could affect rural asset development and disrupting gender-equitable wages, disproportionately impacting women,” he added.

Lavanya Tamang, another researcher with LibTech, said, “Millions of workers are being attacked on their fundamental right to work and earn. The government has recently assured that it will consider case by case for exclusions. But how is it practically possible to scrutinise millions of cases?”

Tamang said that the development will have long-term impact. “Moreover, it is unclear if the deleted workers will be able to seek work or receive pending wages or allowed to work but not able to receive payment. No clarity has been issued,” she added.

Anuradha Talwar, convenor of NREGA Sangharsh Morcha (NSM) in West Bengal, said pending wages of Rs 2,762 crore for 13.2 million MGNREGS workers have remained unpaid for two years. “Thousands of workers have seen their job cards deleted in the past one year. How will they receive their pending wages if they’re not part of the system?” She said.

Condemning the move, NSM said, “On January 1, 2024, MoRD claimed that Aadhar seeding of 98.31 per cent of ‘active workers’ has been completed. However, against these seeded Aadhaar, only 87.52 per cent ‘active workers’ are now eligible for ABPS. This essentially means that even after five extensions over 11 months, 12.5 per cent of ‘active workers’ are still ineligible for ABPS.”

Job cards were deleted on grounds such as frequent changes in bank account number by beneficiary, non-updating of new bank account number of concerned programme officer to non-submission of new account by the beneficiary on time, the organisation pointed out. “This shows the lacunae and inefficiency of ABPS and MoRD putting the onus on poor works for non-compliance.”

The deletion of job cards, a routine process, saw 4.74 per cent of workers deleted in the financial year 2021-22. The figure increased to 19 per cent the following year. In 2023-24, 7.72 per cent of NREGS workers were removed from the system. 

“In the last two years alone, job cards of nearly 76 million workers have been deleted, many of whom are alive and willing to work. This is akin to decreasing the denominator to make a fraction look good. To mitigate these concerns, the MoRD must release a breakdown of reasons for deletions for the financial years 2022-23 and 2023-24,” the NSM demanded.