Doling out money for that scheme makes people inactive and lazy, it says

On a day that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) got an additional allocation of Rs. 5,000 crore in the Union Budget, the Rashtriya Swayamsevk Sangh (RSS) has raised the red flag, saying the scheme makes the recipient “inactive.”

The MGNREGS fund should rather be diverted for skill development mission for employment, a top RSS functionary said in Kolkata on condition of anonymity.

“Doling out money [for MGNREGS] makes people inactive … lazy,” the RSS leader said on Saturday.

The functionary was asked if the RSS’s focus on working for rural uplift was reducing, as rural growth might confine the farmers in their respective villages reducing the supply of migrant workers in urban or semi-urban locations. The leader denied it.

“The focus [of the RSS] to work in rural areas is still as much as it used to be,” the leader said.

However, subsidising the rural poor through the MGNREGS is no more an acceptable solution to eradicate poverty. “Rather the government can play a role to make people self-sufficient and thus skill development is necessary, as many people can be gainfully employed,” the RSS leader said.

The Finance Minister has announced launching of a National Skills Mission, a favoured project of the Prime Minister, to consolidate skill initiatives across several Ministries on Saturday.