India’s biggest anti-poverty scheme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act or MGNREGA, has been given its “highest allocation ever” of 48,000 crores in the government’s annual Budget presented today, said Finance Minster Arun Jaitley to Parliament.
The scheme provides jobs to an estimated 50 million households.Increasing the Budget for MGNREGA could help compensate the rural poor, hit hardest by the cash shortage that followed the demonetisation drive. “Honourable members would be happy to note that the Budget provision of Rs 38,500 crore under MGNREGA in 2016-17 has been increased to Rs 48,000 crore in 2017-18. This is the highest ever allocation for the MGNREGA. The initiative to geo-tag all MGNREGA assets and putting them in public domsain has established greater transparency. We are also using space technology in a big way to plan MGNREGA works,” Mr Jaitley said in his Budget speech.
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