Contrary to perception, demand for work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MG-NREGS) was actually higher in migrant-recipient states like Tamil Nadu than the migrant-origin states like West Bengal during the pandemic-hit 2020 and 2021, the Survey found.

So the Survey found it difficult to conclusively determine the relationship between the MG-NREGS employment and movement of migrant labour and said it “requires further research” to establish any such correlation.

“Intuitively, one may expect that higher MG-NREGS demand may be directly related to the movement of migrant labour i.e. source states would be more impacted. Nevertheless, state-level analysis shows that for many migrant source states like West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Bihar, the MG-NREGS employment in most months of 2021 has been lower than the corresponding levels in 2020.

In contrast, the demand for MG-NREGS employment has been higher for migrant recipient states like Punjab, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for most months in 2021 over 2020,” it said.

According to labour ministry’s reply to a Parliament question on December 6, 1.14 crore internal migrant workers moved back to their states of origin since March 2020. While West Bengal got nearly 14 lakh such workers back, the number was just 72,000 for Tamil Nadu.

MG-NREGS is a demand-driven scheme for the enhancement of livelihood security of the households in rural areas by providing at least one hundred days of guaranteed wage employment to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work in every financial year. Demand for work under MG-NREGS is an indicator of rural labour markets.

Analysis latest data on demand for work under MGNREGS, the Survey found the demand for MGNREGS work has stabilised after the second Covid wave after peaking during the nationwide lockdown in June 2020; but aggregate employment under the rural employment guarantee scheme is still higher than pre-pandemic level.

“For some states like Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, the demand for work under MG-NREGS has reduced to below the pre-pandemic levels during the last few months,” it said.