Rural job scheme to pause for 60 days at harvest; drought leaves farm labourers fearing a squeeze

Nagpur: The Centre's VB-G RAM G scheme provides rural labourers 125 days of work a year. To ensure farmhands are available for field work, the law proposes that works under the scheme pause for 60 days during the crop harvest. But with the drought leaving fields without crops this year, labourers will find no farm work either, and if the scheme's works also stop, their livelihoods will be at stake, Loksatta reported.

According to the agriculture department, the soybean and cotton harvest usually begins after October 15 and the tur harvest after November 15. States have the power to relax the provision during a drought. No information has yet come from the state government on the harvest period, the scheme's commissioner Anita Meshram said.

With conditions in rural areas grim, labourers need work; rather than stopping the works, wages should be increased, and states should send such a proposal to the Centre, Congress MP Shyamkumar Barve has demanded.

Source: Loksatta