NPR and NRC, a crisis invited

The NPR and NRC, which will unleash a humanitarian crisis, are being pushed at a time when rural distress is acute.

It is unfortunate that instead of focusing on increasing rural wages and clearing payments of MGNREGA....

....the BJP-led government is wasting resources on divisive policies such as CAA , NPR, and NRC.

The estimated cost of the NPR is ₹4,000 crore, an amount that can support 2.2 crore, landless labourers, through MGNREGA for 100 days at current wage rates.

Further, since the arbitrary dilution of Article 370, according to reports of the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce.....

....Kashmir Valley has incurred losses of around ₹18,000 crore, and about 5 lakh people have lost their jobs since August.

The losses would be amplified if Jammu and Ladakh are added to this calculation.

Add to these the costs of running detention centres for those categorised as ‘stateless’, and we are staring at a manufactured crisis of epic proportions.

Women, in particular, would pay a huge price as they relocate after marriage and hence don’t have relevant documents.

When the Central government can’t get cash transfers correct for rural women under the PM Matru Vandana Yojana

...due to variation in documents, implementing NPR-NRC would be a monumental catastrophe.

The Consumer Expenditure Survey sents a grim picture of rural India. According to this report, the consumption and income in the entire cross-section of the rural society decreased.

The average monthly consumption levels of the poorest 50% of the rural population was ₹1,138 in 2011-2012. This came down to ₹1,082 in 2017-2018.

In other words, more people have become poorer and hence have less money to spend.

Observing such inconvenient truths, the government tried to shun the survey results citing “data quality issues”.

The government had kept delaying the release of the 2017-2018 Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data.

In January 2019, the PLFS data was leaked, revealing that unemployment under the BJP-led government has increased to a 45 year high.

In the last five years, the budgetary allocation for MGNREGA has been abysmal.

One-sixth of each year’s allocation are pending wage payments from previous years.

Payments of most States haven’t been released by the Central government since October.

Continued delays in wage payments, in violation of Supreme Court orders, and low wage rates discourage workers from taking up MGNREGA work.

The wrong focus of the government has pushed the poor and unemployed into trouble.