A glitch-prone digital attendance system and mandatory Aadhaar-linked bank accounts to receive wages have hit the very people the rural jobs scheme was meant to benefit.
On 15 March, Vinita Tigga sat with her infant daughter in her lap at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. Even as she tried to soothe her child, the 35-year-old looked tired, weary from the more-than-1,000 km train journey that she took from her village in Jharkhand, along with at least 50 other workers, mostly women, to arrive in the national capital.
Tigga has a pressing reason to be at the famous protest site. In December, she was compelled to quit work under the Indian government’s rural jobs programme, or MNREGA, after struggling too long to get regular wages because of glitches in …
Shivani is a former writer at The Morning Context. She reported and wrote on the intersection of society, technology and business. Before that, she wrote for Yesterday, our daily news product.
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shivani@mailtmc.com
Delhi