It’s Time For Digital MGNREGA: Says Analyst Sumant Parimal

18th Oct. 2022, New Delhi: Much talked Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) of Govt. of India was at lime light during recent Pandemic , when many poor lost their jobs during lockdowns and returned to their villages and enrolled under MGNREGA scheme for rural employment.

Recently Govt. of India has decided to define the minimum quantum of work required to earn a day’s wages under the MGNREGA, in which unskilled rural populations gets a guarantee of 100 days of employment to every rural household that demands work, which are mostly manual labor works.

While Govt. of India is reviewing types and quantum of works which gets covered under MGNREGA, Chief Analys of ‘5Jewels Research’ Mr Sumant Parimal is for a digital version of MGNREGA.

Giving his opinion on recent decision of Govt. of India to define minimum work requirement under MGNREGA, Mr Sumant Parimal said “With growing adoption of digital technologies, mobile and internet among rural population of India, and with growing digital awareness among the masses and with mass semi-skilled manpower required for creating massive digitization infrastructure which also includes massive data and content mapping, scanning, tagging and augmentation tasks for creating Big-Data, Analytics and A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) Systems, it’s time for Digital MGNREGA, where rural populations gets works in digital areas also, in addition to present scope of physical labor”.

“We need huge historic as well current data, content and context generated from our various activities and surroundings ecosystems, which becomes raw material for fueling growth of our Analytics and A.I. systems, which requires huge human efforts to augment such digital raw materials (data, contents, images, contexts etc.). Indian rural populations, who are looking for job under MGNREGA scheme, could be a good target to engage in such basic digital infrastructure creation activities as well, with minor skilling, hence requires expanding scope of present day MGNREGA, which is mostly across physical infrastructure creation activities in areas like road building, construction, irrigation” Sumant Parimal said further.

At present Govt. of India expends around one trillion rupees under MGNREGA annually, which mostly goes as laborer wages, and becomes earning for the poor rural populations. But a Digital MGNREGA, as per 5Jewels Research’s Analyst, shall be able to generate a strong revenue stream for Govt. of India by monetizing created digital assets, which in turn may reduce budgetary deficit of the Govt., which happens due to funding of large public welfare schemes like MGNREGA, and also have potentials to increase per capita income of the country.