New Delhi: Close to 20% of the 14 crore active workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) are as yet ineligible to be paid under the Aadhaar-based payment system (ABPS), government data indicates.Data accessed on Monday (August 28) on the scheme’s website says that 11,72,40,317 (11.7 crore) active workers are currently eligible to be paid under the ABPS out of a total of 14,34,26,231 (14.3 crore) active workers.That leaves 2,61,85,914 (2.6 crore or ~18%) active workers who are ineligible to be paid under the ABPS, which government officials have said will become compulsory starting September 1.The MGNREGS guarantees 100 days of daily wage employment to rural households at specially notified minimum wages.According to its website, active workers are “any individuals of households who [have] worked any one day in either the last three financial years or in [the] current financial year”.Under the scheme, workers must be paid their wages for any given day of work within 15 days, failing which they are entitled to additional compensation.But it is unclear how ineligible workers will be compensated for their work in the coming days.Activists say it would be “illegal” for the government to deny payment to ineligible workers despite the ABPS deadline.“Twenty percent of over 14 crore workers are still not eligible for payment through ABPS; it is a huge number. Preventing payment of wages is illegal according to the MGNREGA. The 2005 Act says that anyone who demands work must get work,” activist Nikhil Dey of the NREGA Sangharsh Morcha told ThePrint.Some states have up to a quarter of their active MGNREGS workers still ineligible to receive payments under the ABPS. Assam, for instance, has just about 39% of its active workers able to receive their pay under the system. Non-active workers registered under the MGNREGS are also entitled to work under the scheme. When such workers are accounted for, the total number of workers eligible for the ABPS in each state decreases.While the scheme’s website contains information on the total number of eligible workers, the Union rural development ministry’s ‘ABPS Enablement Tracking Dashboard’ only lists how many active workers are becoming eligible over time.Laavanya Tamang, an employee of the public service delivery company LibTech India, told the New Indian Express that “by ignoring non-active workers, the government is undermining their constitutional right to work”. For any MGNREGS worker to be eligible under the ABPS, their job card and bank account must be seeded with their Aadhaar. Their bank account must also be connected to the National Payments Corporation of India’s (NPCI) mapper.While the vast majority of states and union territories have close to or over 90% of their active workers’ Aadhaar details seeded with their job cards as of August 28, Assam, Nagaland and Meghalaya have only 75%, 45% and 33% seeding respectively.According to the rural development ministry’s dashboard, Meghalaya’s low ABPS eligibility of 3.1% is explained by just 9.5% of its Aadhaar-verified active workers (who number about 31% of all active workers in the state) having had their NPCI mapping process completed.Critics of the ABPS have said that it is overly cumbersome and may deter rural beneficiaries from seeking work under the MGNREGS.“Seeding and mapping a bank account can be very cumbersome. It involves stringent KYC requirements, biometric or demographic authentication, and resolving possible inconsistencies between the Aadhaar database and the bank account. Inconsistencies between any of those two and the job card can also create problems for Aadhaar-based payments of [MGNREGS] wages,” economist Jean Dreze told The Wire when the Union government first announced the ABPS would become mandatory.The Union government first said the ABPS would become mandatory starting February 1 this year but has extended the deadline multiple times since.However, these extensions did not stop state governments “racing against the timeline” from resorting to deleting the job cards of workers whose card and Aadhaar data did not match, The Hindu reported.Chakradhar Buddha, a policy analyst with LibTech India, also told The News Minute that workers remain in the dark about such mismatches until they visit a job site.“Often, the only way active workers know that there is an issue with their job card is when they turn up for work and their name isn’t on the muster rolls. Until then, they are unaware,” he said.“A simple difference in the spelling of someone’s name, or the incorrect gender, could result in your job card not being successfully authenticated with your Aadhaar card.”Despite the multiple deadline extensions since February this year, news agency PTI reported government sources as saying last week that the September 1 deadline will not be extended.Nikhil Dey told ThePrint that this “will only result in deletion of job cards and people being denied work”.“For instance, if one person is not eligible for ABPS payment then the payment of the entire muster roll [which has 10 people] will get affected. The payment is released for all 10 in one transaction,” he continued to say.He also told the New Indian Express that the constituent workers’ unions under the NREGA Sangharsh Morcha will send a memorandum to the rural development ministry about the September 1 deadline.
