PM Modi's 'cruel new year gift': Congress slams govt over Aadhaar-based MGNREGA payments

With an Aadhaar-based system becoming mandatory for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) payments, the Congress on Monday said the Modi government should "stop weaponising technology", especially Aadhaar, to deny the most vulnerable Indians their social welfare benefits.

The party also alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "well-known disdain for MGNREGA has translated into a slew of experiments designed to use technology as a weapon to exclude".

Wage payments under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme will now be made only through the Aadhaar-based payment system (ABPS), sources said on Monday. The last extension of the deadline to state governments to make the payments mandatory through the system ended on 31 December.

The sources said it has been conveyed to states that payments will now be made only through ABPS. If any state has any grievance, it will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, they said.

In a statement, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said, "There are in total 25.69 crore MGNREGA workers of whom 14.33 crore are considered as active workers. As on December 27, 34.8 per cent of total registered workers (8.9 crore) and 12.7 per cent of active workers (1.8 crore) are still ineligible for ABPS."

Despite many challenges highlighted by workers, practitioners and researchers in using ABPS for MGNREGA wage payments, the Modi government has continued with its "destructive experiments with technology", he said.

"This is prime minister's cruel new year gift to exclude crores of the poorest and marginalised Indians from earning a basic income," he alleged.

Ramesh pointed out that a statement issued by the ministry of rural development dated 30 August 2023 made certain "questionable claims" such as job cards will not be deleted on the basis that the worker is not eligible for APBS and that different "stakeholders" in certain "consultations" have found ABPS the best route for wage payments.

It also claimed that ABPS helps workers get their wage on time and avoids transaction rejections, Ramesh noted.

"First, since April 2022, an alarming 7.6 crore registered workers were deleted from the system. 1.9 crore registered workers were deleted from the system nine months into the current financial year. Ground verification of deleted workers has shown that a significant number of deletions have been wrongfully done — as a result of the tearing hurry of the Modi government to implement Aadhaar authentication and ABPS," he alleged.

Ramesh said the ministry must clarify who these "stakeholders" were and when these consultations were held. "In fact, the Modi government has turned a deaf ear to the multiple concerns from numerous delegations on the implementation of ABPS and other technological interventions," he claimed.

"The MoRD's claims regarding the increase in payment efficiency with the ABPS, which remain unsubstantiated, have been thoroughly debunked by a LibTech India working paper. The study analysed 3.2 crore wage transactions to demonstrate that there is no statistically significant difference in the time taken to process account and Aadhaar based payments by the Union government," he said.

The working paper also shows that the difference in rejection rates between ABPS and the account-based payments is statistically negligible, he added.

"The PM's well-known disdain for MGNREGA has translated into a slew of experiments designed to use technology as a weapon to exclude -- such as the digital attendance (NMMS), ABPS, drone monitoring and the proposed integration of facial recognition to NMMS," Ramesh alleged.

No due consultation or scientific piloting was done before unleashing these experiments on crores of Indians, he claimed.

"The Indian National Congress reiterates its demand of August 30, 2023, that the Modi government should stop weaponising technology, especially Aadhaar to deny the most vulnerable Indians their social welfare benefits, release delayed wage payments and implement open muster rolls and social audits to improve transparency," Ramesh said in his statement.