In India's grain bowl, farms face threat from MNREGS

Sitting at the edge of fields in the heart of India's grain bowl, Gurdayal Singh Malik shakes his head in resignation about the lack of workers needed for his 60-acre farm, blaming the government's flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) for the shortage.

Ever since the start of the programme, which guarantees 100 days of work a year for rural households, the flow of migrant labour to Punjab and Haryana has dropped to a trickle, forcing farmers such as Malik to hike farm wages massively - and still he cannot find enough workers.

"Labourers used to come every year to the large landholders, asking for work. Now they pick and choose and go about saying: Sardar (master), we don't have time," said the 58-year-old farmer in Kurukshetra in Haryana.

"Four or five years ago, it used to cost 500-800 rupees to plant an acre of paddy. Last year the labourers took a tenth of the paddy and 3,000-4,000 rupees."

Image: Farmers plant saplings in a rice field in Shariefabad on the outskirts of Srinagar.

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