Wages of politics or last-mile welfare? The case of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)

Abstract

ABSTRACT Using official statistics, bureaucratic registers and ethnographic material collected from the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) from six districts across six Indian states, the article explains under what conditions the capacity of last-mile bureaucracy matters for the performance of pro-poor welfare programmes in the Indian federal polity. In seeking to address the presence of heterogenous welfare outcomes in the districts of India, the article underscores the salience of last-mile bureaucrats and the extent to which the politicization of redistributive struggles might contribute to local state capacity to deliver welfare services, a hitherto under-researched aspect in comparative social development research. Challenging the conventional thesis that only a strong autonomous state succeeds in implementing welfare programmes, the article further argues that effective policy implementation can occur within the peculiar environment of relatively low-capacity last-mile bureaucracies even in the face of adverse socioeconomic circumstances. In short, the article shifts attention to the understudied relationship between the capacity of last-mile bureaucracy and welfare outcomes in India.