If we get work in the village, why would we go elsewhere? We have worked on NREGA before, but our money gets stuck," said one inter-state migrant worker on his way back to Garhwa in Jharkhand from Andhra Pradesh.
Such testimonies are common among the many workers who are trudging back home across India currently. Another person heading to Deoghar in Jharkhand from Ahmedabad said: “The problem with NREGA is that you get work for a week, and then nothing for 2-2.5 months.
We can’t survive like that." With millions of workers returning to rural India, the government has naturally (and belatedly) committed to a major boost in the outlay for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) this year.