Improved opportunities in the rural sector thus contributed to ease the pressure to migrate to urban areas. Most of the employment was seasonal, mainly to confront the vagaries of the monsoon as an ovenvhelming share of the cropped areas is rain-fed, and the actual number of days of employment remained at 45 days in 2008-09. On a different ground, some 69 million new bank and post office accounts were opened to make payments to NREGA workers -an unprecedented move towards greater financial inclusion for the large numbers of marginalised workers. In remote areas, NREGA is also supporting the use of smart cards and biometric signatures for wage payments.