Abstract
The study discusses the impact of the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) on an already tightened rural labour market through a field survey conducted in two villages of Rajasthan. The article argues that the impact of the programme in a constricted rural labour market has been marginal because of a low off-take of work because of already developed alternate livelihood strategies which reduced the incentive to work in this programme. Nevertheless, the scheme has been instrumental in two ways: first, it led to the withdrawal of lower caste women from agricultural work which signifies an escape from the exploitative production relations in the two villages under study; and second, it has resulted in the formation of an exclusive category of MGNREGA workers consisting of female workers from the middle castes who were previously were not participating in paid labour.
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