The suggestion given by Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot to the union government to start a MGNREGA like scheme for urban areas also seems apt in today’s circumstances. Due to COVID a lot of job opportunities have been decimated while many small factories have slowed down and do not require the services of their former workers. Moreover, many migrants have stayed in moufsils and small localities are not willing to go back to Kerala or Maharashtra and are now sitting idle at home.
Anticipating such a bleak situation, in the month of June this year, Gehlot had urged Union Urban Development and Housing Minister Hardeep Singh Puri to introduce an employment guarantee scheme in urban areas on the lines of MGNREGA to help those rendered unemployed due to the coronavirus crisis.
Livelihoods of a large section of people in urban areas have been affected due to the pandemic, he said in a letter to Puri. The Centre should introduce a scheme to provide employment to the jobless in urban areas for a fixed period, Gehlot had that said.
Currently, in Rajasthan, the economic activities are limping back to normalcy, manufacturing units had already started production once the strict provisions of lockdown were relaxed and economic activities were allowed. But the daily wage earners are worst hit in this pandemic. If the union government accepts the suggestion of Gehlot, it will prove to be a significant step towards providing employment opportunities in urban areas across the country and will be counted as MGNREGA 2.0 with urban touch.
Gehlot surely deserves the appreciation for his farsightedness and for actually providing solutions on the fronts on which the union government has failed till now.
Rajasthan’s starling performance in MGNREGA especially during COVID times is no secret. The state has toiled hard to ensure that this UPA scheme provides employment to rural people as much as possible.
