The Politics of Social Policy Implementation: The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and Uneven Development in India

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Since the onset of the twenty-first century, India has initiated various social welfare programs to provide social protection for the people who have been marginalized from the formal social safety net. Since 2005, legislation has granted a series of social rights to marginalized rural households. Among these rights-based welfare programs, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) stands out as the flagship initiative of India’s new welfare system. It has targeted marginalized informal rural households, who have not enjoyed the fruits of the social safety net, by formally granting them the right to employment. It has also incorporated new governance ideas such as a demand-driven approach, decentralized implementation, and social audit to increase accountability and transparency. The MGNREGA has emerged as the largest social welfare scheme in terms of budget allocation and coverage, yielding positive outcomes such as increased beneficiary incomes, advancement of gender equality, and creation of assets in rural areas. Nonetheless, despite the expansion of the MGNREGA all over India, policy outcomes have been uneven between the states in terms of participation rates, the relationship between poverty level and participation, and cumulative average person-days per household. This prompts the question: why does the MGNREGA produce superior policy outcomes in certain states but not in others? By delving into the politics surrounding policy implementation at the local level, this paper argues that the degree of goal congruence between policy implementers shapes divergent policy outcomes.