• The Aadhaar authentication plays a crucial role in rural job schemes in India, such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).
• The Aadhaar-based authentication helps in ensuring transparency, preventing fraud, and ensuring that funds are reaching the intended beneficiaries.
• It enables the government to monitor the attendance of workers and payments made to them, ensuring accountability and reducing corruption.
• The use of Aadhaar authentication in MGNREGA scheme has also reduced the instances of ghost workers, where people who do not exist in reality are registered as workers to claim wages.
• The new deadline for the Aadhaar-based rural job scheme wages has been extended to September 30, 2021, to enable the beneficiaries to link their Aadhaar numbers with their bank accounts and avoid any delays in receiving their wages.
• The extension will also give more time to the government to ensure that all the beneficiaries are registered under Aadhaar to receive their payments seamlessly.
• The Aadhaar-based authentication has helped in reducing leakages in the system, ensuring that the funds allocated for rural job schemes reach the intended beneficiaries, and empowering them.

Overall, the Aadhaar authentication has been instrumental in enhancing the effectiveness of rural employment schemes and ensuring that the poor and marginalized in India receive the benefits of government programs.