Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for the Ministry of Science and Technology; Ministry of Earth Sciences and Union Minister of State for Prime Minister's Office; Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions; Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Space, Shri Jitendra Singh said that the new portal under Bhuvan “Yuktdhara” will facilitate planning of new MGNREGA assets using Remote Sensing and GIS based information.
this platform will serve as a repository of assets (Geotags) created under various national rural development programmes i.e. MGNREGA, Integrated Watershed Management Programme, Per Drop More Crop and Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana etc., along with field photographs.
the name given is very apt as word ‘Yukt’ is derived from Yojanam, the planning and ‘Dhara’ indicates the flow. He said that it is definitely a culmination of untiring joint efforts of ISRO and Ministry of Rural development made towards realising a G2G service for rural planning in support of decentralized decision making.
What is special About this portal?
This portal integrates wide variety of thematic layers, multi-temporal high resolution earth observation data with analysis tools.
Planners will analyse previous assets under various schemes and facilitates identification of new works using online tools. Plans prepared will be evaluated by appropriate authorities under State Departments. Thus, Yuktdhara based plans will be prepared by grassroot functionary and verified by appropriate authorities for relevance and resource allocation. This would ensure quality of plan and enable a long term monitoring of the assets created over the years.
GeoMGNREGA on Bhuvan has received wide acclaims.
The Before-During-After Geotagging of assets has successfully implemented the progress based disbursement of the funds during the process of creation of rural assets. Also, a Citizen-centric Mobile Application JANMANREGA has helped rural population for providing feedback using Bhuvan services.
He was of the view that the synergy of Geographic Information and Earth Observation technology has not only brought the value of location to each rural asset, but also brought in unprecedented transparency in MGNREGA programme.
The Customisation on Bhuvan as per process requirement of Ministry of Rural Development, continuous handholding of State functionaries and also enthusiasm demonstrated by State Department personnel in adopting the technology for building GeoMGNREGA database is noteworthy and is a first of its kind massive exercise in the whole world.
What is MGNREGA
Mahatma Gandhi Employment Guarantee Act 2005 later renamed as the "Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act" or MGNREGA, is an Indian labour law and social security measure that aims to guarantee the 'right to work'.
This act was passed in 23 August 2005 under the UPA government of Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh. It aims to enhance livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.
The act was first proposed in 1991 by P.V. Narasimha Rao. It was finally accepted in the parliament and commenced implementation in 625 districts of India. Based on this pilot experience, NREGA was scoped up to cover all the districts of India from 1 April 2008. The statute was praised by the government as "the largest and most ambitious social security and public works programme in the world". In its World Development Report 2014, the World Bank termed it a "stellar example of rural development".
The MGNREGA was initiated with the objective of "enhancing livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year, to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work".
Another aim of MGNREGA is to create durable assets (such as roads, canals, ponds and wells). Employment is to be provided within 5 km of an applicant's residence, and minimum wages are to be paid. If work is not provided within 15 days of applying, applicants are entitled to an unemployment allowance. That is, if the government fails to provide employment, it has to provide certain unemployment allowances to those people.
Thus, employment under MGNREGA is a legal entitlement. MGNREGA is to be implemented mainly by gram panchayats (GPs). The involvement of contractors is banned.