Expenditure Crunch
Budget 2020 reduced the allocation to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) by 13.5 per cent (to ₹61,500 crore) from the previous revised estimate of ₹71,000 crore citing lower requirements. This was before coronavirus had set its foot in India. By mid-May, when the pandemic was wreaking havoc across the country, the government increased allocation to MGN-REGS by ₹40,000 crore, taking the total to ₹1.01 lakh crore, to support lakhs of migrant workers forced to go back to their villages after being rendered jobless due to the lockdown.
This is just one example of how the economic crisis due to the lockdown has thrown the Central government’s FY21 Budget – both revenue and expenditure – out of
