MGNREGA guarantees up to 100 days of paid work a year to any rural household that wants it — a legal floor under the poorest. In practice, the scheme’s ability to deliver depends on two things: enough budget, and wages that arrive on time.

On both, recent data is strained. The average wage paid in 2025-26 worked out to about ₹271 per day — below the notified rate in nearly every state. And MGNREGA’s share of GDP has shrunk from around 0.41% in 2021-22 to roughly 0.2% by 2024-25, even as demand for work persisted.

Work demanded but not given

Reporting on the latest figures found nearly one crore workers who asked for work under the scheme could not get it in 2025-26, and large sums in wages and material costs remained pending to states. Delayed payments push labourers to migrate in search of better-paid, more reliable work — defeating the scheme’s purpose.

A parliamentary panel in 2025 recommended timely wages, inflation-indexing, and making the Aadhaar-based payment system optional after exclusions left many workers waiting.

The fix is mostly arithmetic

Unlike many problems, this one has a concrete remedy: fund the guarantee to match demand, index wages to inflation, and clear dues on schedule. None of that is partisan — it’s the difference between a guarantee on paper and one that feeds a family.