NEW DELHI: Finance minister Arun Jaitley has reaffirmed the Narendra Modi government’s commitment to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Scheme and promised increased allocation of funds and other resources for the flagship rural development scheme that completed ten years on Tuesday.“This would be the first year when there would not be any cut in the allocation in NREGS or any other social sector scheme. We will in fact see an increase,” Jaitley said while addressing MGNREGA Sammelan on Tuesday. “This is also the first year when all the funds allocated were utilized by NREGS,” he said. NREGS was allocated Rs 37,000 crore this fiscal, the highest ever budgetary support extended to the scheme, the finance minister said. While India is growing at a faster pace than the rest of the global economy , the domestic sector has not been able to contribute much to this growth, he said.“Rains have not just impacted country’s farm output but also shrunk the rural demand.”Jaitley said the government will step in to increase expenditure on development in areas including rural electrification, roads and irrigation to spur rural demand.He said the rural economy is in pain and the relevance of NREGS is political, social and economical in the current climate.“When the government changed in 2014, there was speculation about whether we will reduce the allocation to NREGS or change the scheme. But the new government has just not just taken it forward but also raised allocation to NREGS,” the finance minister said. Criticising the implementation of the scheme during the tenure of the UPA government, which introduced the scheme, Jaitley said that in its 7-8th year “a sadness that was creeping into the scheme”. “After a few years a scheme at times becomes a formality,” he said.Rural development minister Birender Singh said that in 2015-16 the person-day generation of work under NREGS was the highest in the second and third quarter at 45.88 crore and 46.10 crore, respectively, than it has been in the last five years.“Timely release of funds to states to provide work on demand, an electronic fund management system, and consistent coordination between banks and post offices, besides monitoring of pendency of payments, have led to the revival of NREGS,” Singh said.