Towards right to work: A reflexive analysis on an action research

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is a program for poverty alleviation and an employment generation which provides employment to rural unskilled labourers. It can provide a guarantee of 100 days’ paid employment in a financial year to a rural unskilled labourer who demands it. The program also helps to reduce hunger in rural India. It is different from earlier wage employment programs because it provides a guarantee for work, whereas earlier programs had no such provisions. This paper analyses the employment, consumption and income effects of MGNREGA, including the resulting increase in the purchasing power of rural labourers, after its introduction in the rural area. It also examines the economic and social impact of the scheme in rural areas due to asset creation as result of employment provided by MGNREGA. Lastly, the paper examines the impact of MGNREGA on women’s employment and how MGNREGA changed women’s income, employment and consumption patterns, which can be argued to be indicative of female empowerment. This study concludes that MGNREGA brought positive change to the lives of people in the rural area that was examined. MGNREGA, a landmark in the history of social security legislation in India or indeed anywhere in the world, promises to be a major tool in the struggle for securing employment guarantees in rural areas. The 100-day employment scheme, which came as a bolt from the blue, raised the living standards of rural India in terms of income, employment and consumption. Overall, the study found that MGNREGA has significantly improved the social and economic well-being of its beneficiaries in rural India.

Social safety nets are transfers targeted to the poor or vulnerable. They facilitate access to health and education services to build human capital. To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (earlier known as Millennium Development Goals), national and state governments as well as international organisations have focused on increasing the investments in social transfer programmes. Public works are the policy instruments for mitigating the negative effects of climatic and systematic risks on poor farmers and unskilled and semi-skilled workers. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is the largest social protection programme in the world that provides 100 days of unskilled wage employment to any household residing in rural areas whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. In the state of Odisha the MGNREGA scheme is widely implemented. However, the irregularities involved in the implementation of this social protection programme are of great concern. The present study focuses on the implementation of MGNREGA in three districts of western Odisha. The study has tried to identify the bottleneck in the success of MGNREGA scheme.

This paper has examined the changes in the households’ income and employment pattern and has assessed the impact of MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) -a social-security scheme for the rural poor households launched by India Government (2005). This study refers to an exhaustive survey in three villages in Bankura district, West Bengal, India covering 100 households during the year 2011–12. The impact of MGNREGA focusing employment security, income generation, and its governance and future perspectives were dealt in the study. It was found that MGNREGA covered all poor sections of the rural society irrespective of castes, genders or social orders. It was also observed that this project enhanced income as well as savings of rural households. Further, it was noticed that MGNREGA has created rural employment opportunities.

Sustainable Development (SD) not only ensures addressing the root cause of poverty but also helps in achieving the wellness of society. Protecting the natural resources for current and future generations is the main goal of the SD process. In recent times, developing countries have initiated social safety nets (SSNs) for poverty elimination and to achieve the SD goals through public works. The Government of India has initiated numerous development projects aimed to achieve SD and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is one of them. The research objective of this article is to harness the power of geospatial technology for evaluating the public works under MGNREGA at a district level. The proposed research method utilizes the power of remote sensing data with a very high spatial and temporal resolution to monitor the development activities at the grass root level. Satellite based land-use maps, indices, and publicly available web based geospatial information systems have been used in this investigation to assess the changes that have occurred due to the community-level planned activities. The findings from this research confirm that MGNREGA has the potential to accrue multiple dividends at all the three pillars of SD, i.e., economic development, social development, and environmental protection. It was proved from this research that public works under MGNREGA besides providing the wage based employment to the beneficiaries resulted in improved water conservation and harvesting facilities in the study area and in return, these facilities acted as a catalyst for improved agricultural productivity.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to find the determinants of participation and targeting efficiency of the following safety net programs in West Bengal: Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), self-targeted program; National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), subsidy based livelihood program; Indira Awaas Yojona (IAY), targeted cash transfer program and Public Distribution System (PDS), targeted in kind transfer program. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on a household survey comprising 900 households across three Districts: Murshidabad, Nadia and Burdwan. Findings Benefits from MNREGA and PDS are not substantial, whereas financial benefits are substantial from NRLM and IAY. This paper shows that poor people have higher likelihood of participation in MNREGA and PDS. But, non poor get disproportionate benefits from IAY and NRLM both have been designed for the poor. Therefore, targeting cannot remove elite capture altogether. Socially down trodden section have higher participation in MNREGA and PDS, whereas people who are at upper tier of social hierarchy enjoy the benefits of IAY and NRLM. However, it cannot be said that these programs miss their target completely. Practical implications The study suffers from the usual limitations of sampling. Social implications Programs targeted for the poor are being appropriated by the non poor. If there is better targeting money will be channelized to the desired beneficiaries and welfare will be enhanced. Originality/value The study has unearthed the underlying reasons behind why some safety net programs have better targeting and some safety net programs have poor targeting.

In 2009, the Government of India announced a new set of guidelines for planning of works and preparation of labour budget under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). This guideline made it mandatory for the states to ensure that at least 60% of MGNREGA related works undertaken in a district in terms of costs, is spent for creation of productive assets that are directly linked to agriculture and allied activities. This is very important considering that creation of productive assets is necessary not only for making ecological regeneration but also for ensuring sustainable growth of agriculture sector and creation of livelihood opportunities in a village economy. In this chapter, the authors analyze and document experience towards convergence of the MGNREGA work with other rural developmental schemes in the Odisha and West Bengal states of India. More specifically, the Chapter addresses the following issues: What are the different types of convergence models that have been initiated in Odisha and West Bengal? How have the joint efforts of various line departments contributed to conservation and management of natural resources? Are assets created under convergence initiatives sustainable in the long-run? How have these assets contributed to agriculture sector, particularly in respect of increase in production and yield, changes in cropping pattern, crop diversification, and multiple cropping? Can the existing institutions contribute to management and utilization of the assets created under convergence? If not, what institutional supports are necessary in this regard?

PurposeHow can efficiency of a welfare scheme be measured? The purpose of this paper is to develop an efficiency evaluation model, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) implementation efficiency model (MIEM), to evaluate the rural employment guarantee scheme in India.Design/methodology/approachMIEM employs data envelopment analysis (DEA) to compare relative efficiency of MGNREGA implementing states. It uses policy implementation process as a central “black-box” about which not much can be said, to account for state-wise implementation differences.FindingsBased on administration, funds, expenditure, employment created, works executed and completed, women beneficiaries and households completing 100 days of employment, the MIEM captures current implementation efficiency and provides suggestions to propel inefficient states toward efficiency.Practical implicationsDEA has operationalized MGNREGA evaluation. As a decision support system, MIEM assists evaluators to develop guidelines from better performing states. It is anticipated that it will facilitate scaling up MGNREGA in inefficient states.Social implicationsThe model developed here can be applied to diverse evaluation conditions thus leading to better utilization of scarce resources.Originality/valueThis paper is one of few to use DEA to evaluate MGNREGA, and is one of the first to evaluate all India implementing states on efficiency.

Women empowerment is about promoting their sense of self-worth and ability to make choices which may create social influence in society. Moreover, it emphasises sharing equal responsibility in the family as well as society in terms of accessing their choices without any hindrances, contributing economically to the family and society, and representing equally everywhere in the process of development. World’s largest employment guarantee programme, i.e. Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has provisioned providing 100 days of jobs to one-third of women in the country to ensure livelihood security and asset creation. The current paper tries to highlight the experiences of the beneficiaries from Ladnu block of Rajasthan about their improved lifestyles in terms of qualitative research and suggests ways to bridge the existing gaps to achieve the goal. In other words, it tries to explore whether women, as a beneficiary of the MGNREGA, are contributing to the programme or not, and creating assets for maintaining a better lifestyle. To answer this question, a blended methodology was implemented in two villages of Ladnu block of Rajasthan with 97 respondents. The results are positive from the numbers; however, to achieve the real goal of the Act, the government must actively mull over creating awareness among the community through Gram Panchayat (GP), orient the GP members towards implementing the Act with transparency, timely payment, increase the wage as per the inflation rate and converge different schemes with MGNREGA .

Alleviation of poverty, achieving zero hunger, bringing gender equality, reducing inequalities, providing decent work, and achieving economic growth are just a few of the prioritized objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals. Consequently, inclusive social development and bringing equality among different genders are a few of the prioritized areas of the Sustainable Development Goals along with the development agenda of India. These objectives are the prerogatives of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) of 2005 as well. Although this program started before the SDGs were announced, it promises to fulfill many of the SDGs. MGNREGA ensures 100 days of guaranteed wage employment for rural households at the government-decided wage rate without any discrimination against women or caste. Here, it has been examined for the state of West Bengal to check how much the MGNREGA Act has been able to uplift the state's marginalized communities, namely, Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and women, in the past 5 years from 2017 to 2022. In this study, an attempt has been made to show the trend in the number of person days or working days provided to the SCs, STs, and women for their upliftment through this scheme and whether the increase in total person days provided on the whole through the scheme is good enough that the person days of the SCs, STs, and women have increased proportionally.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is a plausible policy instrument to provide casual employment to the rural population in India, especially women, Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) groups. This study aimed to analyse the recent trends in the financial and physical progress of the MGNREG scheme in Haryana, India. It also explored how much the benefits of the MGNREG scheme have reached SCs, STs and women. The study was based on secondary data from the MGNREGA official website for 2016–2017 to 2020–2021. The results indicated that the performance of the Haryana state was not satisfactory at all in achieving the objective of providing a minimum of 100 days of employment because only a small fraction of households could complete 100 days of work from 2016–2017 to 2020–2021. Further, the participation of SC/ST households in the MGNREG scheme reduced over the years. It also found a year-on-year increase in women person-days during the first four years between 2016–2017 and 2019–2020 and slightly declined to 48.80% in 2020–2021. However, it was more than the statutory limit of 33% stipulated by the MGNREGA each year.

Based on a primary survey carried out in 2009, 24 Parganas (North), West Bengal, India, this chapter tries to evaluate the effects of various policy interventions on the employment status of the rural women and income level and different family expenditures of corresponding households. The study considers the impact of two different policies: Sawarnajayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana (SGSY) and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Applying propensity score matching, the study observes that SGSY participation had a positive significant impact on family food expenditure and employment status of rural women, whereas MGNREGA does not have any such impact. However, impact of these policies on household income and monthly savings and consumption expenditure shows that SGSY had positive but insignificant impact, but MGNREGA again did not register any such impact.

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is a major policy undertaken by the Indian government. It is a unique and an innovative program. It is expected that the program will sustain for several years. However, whether MGNREGA will continue to yield the same positive benefits that it brought forth in the first three years of its implementation is a vital question that needs to be examined. The paper attempts to respond to this critical issue by portraying various aspects of MGNREGA’s advancement. The paper begins by explicating the details of the Act, its innovative characteristics, and the factors that support its future viability. Next, opportunities for policy actions are scrutinized and presented. Finally, the paper proposes a mechanism for identifying new and relevant projects. This mechanism includes novel information architecture and a decentralized method of project identification and allocation. The paper is a timely contribution to social and policy science disciplines. It is a contribution because it paves the way for a solution to a historically unsolved socio-economic evil.

The enactment of India’s historic livelihood guarantee programme in the form of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) has been coterminous with a phase of rapid decline in India’s rural poverty rates. This naturally motivates the question as to whether the observed decline in rural poverty can be attributed, at least partly, to efficient targeting and implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS). This study underscores the fact that the welfare impact of anti-poverty programmes such as the MNREGS is critically dependent on whether these programmes actually reach the intended beneficiaries. Using the unit-level data from the 68th round of the NSSO survey on Employment and Unemployment, the article first investigates the possible ‘capture’ of the MNREGS at the national and also at the state levels and the consequent ‘crowding out’ of asset poor rural households. Statistical analysis of household data reveals that although at the national level, the scheme seems to be predominantly directed towards the poor, considerable variations exist among states. After correcting for confounders in treatment and control groups, the study finds that access to MNREGS employment significantly lowers the probability of a rural household of falling in the poverty trap. The article, therefore, concludes that the scheme has the potential of favourably impacting and protecting consumption standards among rural poor. Maximisation of this potential, however, would depend upon proper identification of needy households and rooting out of the pseudo-poor from the ambit of the programme.

A structural equations approach to policy evaluation: Case study of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is a major policy undertaken by the Indian government. However, whether MGNREGA will continue to yield the same positive benefits that it brought forth in the first three years of its implementation is a vital question that needs to be examined. The paper attempts to respond to this critical issue by portraying various aspects of MGNREGAs advancement. The primary focus is to examine its impact on the human resource base of rural India. Has it energized, mobilized, empowered, and delivered to Indias poorest and most marginalized rural people? The paper begins by explicating the details of the Act, its innovative characteristics, its institutional hurdles and its impact on rural-urban migration. It also includes the bottlenecks in the money flow, women participation in the employment, the governance and challenges in the implementation of the act, the factors that support its future viability and opportunities for policy actions are scrutinized and presented .It proposes a mechanism for identifying new and relevant projects. KEYWORDS : rural -urban migration, employment, women empowerment, financial inclusion