Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act: Design Failure, Implementation Failure or Both?

Abstract

The Government of India implemented MGNREGA in 2005–06 to provide social security cum wage employment on demand, initially in 200 districts and was later extended to all of India. The programme expenditure has now ballooned to over 60,000 crore per year in 2018–19, for creating about 267.95 crore man-days of employment. The programme has been beset with a host of issues since its inception, raising serious doubts about its impact in achieving designed objectives. The programme was designed with host of objectives starting from social security to providing livelihood security to wage employment on demand to arresting migration to deep rooting democracy. All prior research looked at specific objectives in a particular geographic area. This article examines the programme achievement data and examines the same against programme objectives and argues that the programme may be flawed in design objectives and inadequate programme architecture. Contrasting the programme data with census raises further issues about reliability.

MGNREGS Performance (2006–21): An Inter-State Analysis

“…This reflects that although the MGNREGS is intended to provide employment guarantee to marginal sections like SC/STs in rural areas, it is not efficient in terms of targeting them and is often being undermined by snatching of the scheme’s benefits by other claimants, due to rationing (Narayanan & Das, 2014; Narayanan et al, 2017), delays in wage payments (Narayanan et al, 2018), and some other problems. As a result, the scheme could not fully address the problem of distress migration from rural areas (Agarwal, 2019; Reddy et al, 2014). This is also clearly evident regarding the COVID-19 predicaments (Kesar et al, 2021; Srivastava, 2020).…”

Contribution of National Rural Employment Guarantee Program on Rejuvenation and Restoration of Community Forests in India

“…The act was originally intended at poverty alleviation and reducing inequality, i.e., achieving social protection goals (Khera and Nayak, 2009;Sharma, 2011;Mahato and Roy, 2015). However, the scope of the program got expanded later on to reducing migration and creation of rural assets and infrastructure thereby strengthening democracy (Agrawal, 2019).…”

“…Thus, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS, hence forth) is one of the largest functional labor guarantee schemes ever recorded in the world (ESID, 2014;Bahal, 2022), which offers 100 days of paid labor in a financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work (Ministry of Rural Development, 2012;Bhalla, 2014;Gupta and Mukhopadhyay, 2014;Ehmke, 2015;Godfrey-Wood and Flower, 2017;Agrawal, 2019). Later, a directive was issued by Ministry of Rural Development that members of Scheduled Tribe who have received land rights under the Forest Rights Act ( 2006) should be given extra 50 days of work under the scheme (Business Standard, 2014).…”

“…Indeed, there are limited empirical evidences pointing that PWPs' such as MGNREGS can generate medium to long-term sustainable extra employment, improve nutrition, afforestation, education outcomes, social, and political stability or asset accumulation (Lieuw- Kie-Song et al, 2011;Dhakane and Mandan, 2014;Blattman and Annan, 2016;Mvukiyehe, 2018;Agrawal, 2019). Also, evidences are lesser as regards the benefits of public infrastructure (community assets) produced by PWPs or of skills developed "through training or on-the-job practice" (Gehrke and Hartwig, 2018).…”

“…There has been an upsurge in PWPs globally (The World Bank, 2009;Subbarao et al, 2013;Bahal, 2022). Representative examples of PWPs reported globally include Program Nasional Pemberdayaan Mandiri (PNPM) in Indonesia (Baker et al, 2013;Global Delivery Initiative, 2015), the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) in Ethiopia (European Union, 2018), Programa de Jefes y Jefas de Hogar Desocupados (Program for Unemployed Male and Female Heads of Households) in Argentina (Galasso and Ravallion, 2004;Kostzer, 2008), the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in India (Agrawal, 2019),Liberia's Cash for Work Temporary Employment Project (CfWTEP), the Vision 2020 Umurenge Program in Rwanda (Subbarao et al, 2013;National Institute of Statistics Rwanda, 2021), and the Expanded Public Works Program in South Africa (South African Government, 2021).…”