New Delhi: A committee appointed by the Union rural development ministry has recommended channelising 70% of MNREGA funds to 3,500 blocks (49%) of the total 7,245 blocks spread across the country to target the poorest of the blocks in the country, Economic Times reported.Of 3,500 blocks, the committee identified 2, 500 as water-deficient blocks and 1,000 as poverty-ridden blocks, where it wants 70% of the budgetary outlay to be spent.It has also recommended a complete overhaul of the programme by linking employment generation efforts with asset creation.The Union government had formed the committee, comprising nine members, in October 2022 to assess the programme’s efficacy as a poverty alleviation tool. Rural Development secretary Amarjeet Sinha headed the panel, which submitted its report to the government last week.The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act was passed in 2005, and the demand-driven scheme guarantees 100 days of unskilled work per year for every rural household that wants it. Since the Narendra Modi-led government assumed power in 2014, the budgetary allocations for the scheme have been reduced drastically. At Rs 60,000 crore, the allocation for the scheme in Union Budget 2023-24 declined by 32% from the revised estimate of Rs 89,400 crore for 2022-2023. The year-on-year budgetary decline continues despite the fact that demand under the rural guarantee scheme rose drastically during the COVID-19 pandemic.The latest panel – which conducted a survey across 10 states of Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Assam, Meghalaya, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh – recommended that a “one-size fits all” does not work and there is a need to have a targeted approach in place, a senior government official told ET.During the survey, the government source said that the committee had received several complaints against the new technological interventions, including a mobile app to register attendance and mandatory Aadhaar-based payments. The committee has pointed out in its report that technology can be a means but not an end in itself.Those associated with NREGA, including workers and activists, have been opposing the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS), a mobile app, which has been made mandatory. Before the introduction of the NMMS app, the workers’ attendance was physically marked on paper. But under the NMMS, two time-stamped and geo-tagged photographs are required to be taken at the worksite to mark the attendance of each worker. However, there has been a growing clamour for doing away with the app, for they allege that it is not meeting the objective.Nikhil Dey of NREGA Sangharsh Morcha had earlier told The Wire that the government wants to “kill” the programme by reducing funds and by introducing barriers by bringing in technology which is not serving the purpose. “It’s a bloodbath. They are trying to kill the programme,” Dey had said.In 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi famously called MGNREGA a “living monument of Congress government’s failure”. In a speech in parliament, he had said, “After so many years in power, all you were able to deliver is for a poor man to dig ditches a few days a month.”