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With its several innovative features, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is considered to be a game changer for rural India. Assessing the first 15 years of its implementation, this article mainly presents collated key data on its performance in various Indian states and then seeks to explain why some indicators may look less successful in different states. Many factors contribute to variations in MGNREGS performance, but what effects were observed in economically backward states to protect impoverished rural Indians from sinking into distress scenarios? Based on the official figures, the article explores answers for the period of 2006–21.

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The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is not exclusively intended to provide employment in rural areas. Its objective of employment guarantee is linked with the creation of durable and sustainable assets. With this, MGNREGA has long run objective to enhance livelihood security of rural households. To achieve this, list of permissible works are clearly stipulated in the Act itself. So far, MGNREGA has successfully completed over a decade of journey in the countryside. In this long voyage, it is quite important to understand how far MGNREGA has become successful in creating sustainable assets through employment generation. The unevenness of economic development across the regions, MGNREGA implementation may not be same. So demand for employment varies across the regions. As result, employment generation and assets creation obviously differ from region to region. In addition, its performance depends upon financial resources, administrative mechanism, planning, monitoring and supervision, etc. In general, need for MGNREGA arises mostly in droughtprone, unirrigated and rain-fed rural areas. The present study attempts to explain the relation between employment generation and assets creation in drought-affected regions. For this study, Kalaburagi region of Karnataka is chosen where droughts occur frequently. Under MGNREGA, employment generation is relatively high in Kalaburagi when compared with state and national level. Work completion rate was increased from 44 percent to 79 percent for first three years and declined drastically thereafter. This work completion is relatively better in the works like rural connectivity, water conservation and rural sanitation. During 2006-17, just 13 percent of works were completed out of total undertaken works. The correlation between employment generation and work completion rate is too weak. From a decade of MGNREGA implementation, assets creation remained to be unsatisfactory.