When the farm sector cooled, construction rode to the rescue

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₹11.1 trillion in FY25, budget documents showed. Emails sent to the finance ministry and the rural development ministry seeking their comments remained unanswered till press time. In FY24, the total spending for rural jobs is projected to be ₹86,000 crore, slightly below ₹90,806 crore spent in FY23.

For FY25, the government has allocated ₹86,000 crore for the rural jobs scheme. The allocation is typically recalibrated depending on the actual demand for such jobs jobs. Experts said the social security net offered by the scheme for the rural poor and the unemployed played a critical role after the pandemic.

As the economy gradually gets back its strength, it is likely the reliance on government-sponsored 100 days of work will decline and rising private capex will start generating higher-paid, longer-duration work, especially in the manufacturing sector, said Debopam Chaudhuri, chief economist at Piramal Enterprises Ltd. “Though reliance on NREGA may decline over the next one to two years, its relevance is going to remain for a longer time. It is estimated that for the Indian economy to completely get back to the pre-covid trajectory and recoup its lost GDP (during months of lockdowns), it could take another five to seven years clocking an average real growth of 8%.