India's Rural Job Scheme Output Halves to 76.7M Person-Days

The Decline Predates the New Law

The slide in employment has been building for five years. Total person-days under MGNREGA fell from 3,630 million in 2021-22 to 2,280 million in 2025-26, with 3,090 million in 2023-24. The number of people who worked dropped from 106.1 million to 72 million over the same period. Beneficiary households fell from 72.5 million to 53.4 million. Himanshu read the sequence as evidence of a weakening income-support system.

A cleaner test is the April-to-June quarter, Himanshu wrote. That stretch accounts for almost 40% of annual person-days, with last year's share at 44%, and it is a lean period for farm work across most of rural India. The quarter generated 1,160 million person-days in 2021, 1,230 million in 2023, 1,010 million in 2025 and 620 million this year. The latest total is about 60% of 2025's level.

Rain Shortfalls and Stagnant Wages

Himanshu called the current year the critical one. Agriculture is under stress and distress across the rural economy is broad. Rain is the complicating factor. India's rainfall deficit stood at 13% as of 18 August, with Bihar at 40%, Assam at 36%, eastern Uttar Pradesh at 24%, Saurashtra at 24% and Vidarbha at 21%. The India Meteorological Department has predicted an intensification of El Niño in the weeks ahead. Himanshu wrote that a wider precipitation shortfall could deepen rural distress in parts of the country.

Real rural wages have been stagnant for almost a decade. The scheme exists to absorb rural labour and, through non-farm employment and incomes, reduce the impact of an agricultural crisis. MGNREGA helped contain distress in the severe monsoon-deficit years of 2009 and 2015, and again during the covid pandemic. Himanshu wrote that the deficient monsoon should have prompted the government to strengthen the scheme, since rural income support feeds consumption demand, which he called crucial to sustaining the Indian economy's expansion.