Employment Guarantee Programme Research Articles

An Organized Management Information System :A Descriptive Study from the Dash Board of NREGAsoft

All public funded programmes need to ensure transparency and thoroughness in its implementation. If it cannot follow the characteristics, may lead to failure in its execution. For ensuring good governance with the help of technology and innovation it is mandatory to follow the basic rule and regulations implied in the programme. Now it became the standard operating procedure in the present scenario. The largest public funded programme in the world, MGNREGA, is fit up with technology and point of order. The study tries to see that the employment guarantee programme is not only meant for the rural, unskilled marginalised community’s livelihood enhancement, but to empower them in the digital world. Here in this study, tries to describe and relate the high-end technology with a grass root level employment guarantee programme. It is, then deemed to be the best model for all forthcoming government funded programmes.

MGNREGP - PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES IN ARUNACHAL PRADESH

ABSTRACT The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme was introduced in 2005 under National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), 2005. On 2nd October’2009, NREGA has been renamed as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Act (MGNREGA). MGNREGA provides 100 days of guaranteed employment opportunities in a financial year to any rural household whose adult members are willing to do unskilled manual work at the statutory minimum wage. It is an important step towards the realisation of the Right to Work. It is also expected to enhance People’s livelihoods on a sustainable basis by developing the economic and social infrastructure in rural areas. The MGNREGP is different from earlier wage employment programmes because of its legal and demand-driven framework. However, there is no denying fact that there have been many problems in infusing the system with the new culture of demand-driven, right-based and decentralized decision making. The present study was carried in Lohit district of Arunachal Pradesh where the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGP) was initiated in second phase in the financial year 2007-08.

An Analysis of MGNREGA Scheme in Haryana State

MGNREGA is an employment guarantee programme launched by the central government in 2006. MGNREGA addresses the issues of poverty and lack of sustainability in rural areas. The aim of the present study is to analyse the contribution of MGNREGA in employment generation & assess the financial and physical performance of MGNREGA Haryana state. For the achievement of above objectives, the study employed the secondary data that has been gathered from the various government reports and official websites. The data were analysed through the descriptive statistics like percentage, table and graphs. The results of the study revealed that the scheme covered 22 districts, 143 blocks and 6264-gram panchayats of the state. In Haryana total workers registered under MGNREGA is 22.32 Lakh out of these 9 lakhs are active workers at present. Further, the study found that the person-days of employment showing fluctuating trends while women days out of the total person days are continuously increasing except the year 2020-21under MGNREGA. Average wage rate per day per person in state continuously increases. Thus, MGNREGA is a very effective scheme which increase the employment level in rural areas of Haryana state.

Rural market imperfections in India: Revisiting old debates with new evidence

SummaryMotivationEnsuring viability of farming and increasing farmers' incomes are key policy concerns in India at present. To realize these aims, markets need to function well: market imperfections can increase production and transaction costs for farmers and thereby reduce incomes. A longstanding and repeated observation in India is that land productivity is inversely related to farm size, an inverse relation (IR) which may well indicate imperfectly functioning land, labour, and credit markets.PurposeThe study revisits the inverse relation, to examine whether market imperfections still prevail in India, particularly in output, input, factor, and credit markets.Methods and approachBased on multi‐stage sampling, 1,800 households spread over 45 villages and 21 districts were surveyed across Bihar, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Punjab. Micro‐econometric methods were applied to the household‐level data to test for relations between farm size and land and labour productivity, and implied evidence of market imperfections.FindingsA strong IR between land productivity and farm size on the output side, and farm size and family labour use on the input side can be seen. However, intensive use of family labour on small farms is not the only determinant of farm size‐productivity relations. It is found that smaller farmers are relatively more constrained in obtaining credit. The results suggest that Sen's labour dualism theory, together with imperfections in land and credit markets, offers important insights. Also, drawing from the recent literature, measurement errors in plot size and production and “edge effect” could be some of the contributing factors.Policy implicationsOur findings point to the prevalence of surplus family labour on small farms, even a decade after the enactment of a major employment guarantee programme (MGNREGS), exacerbated by small farmers having limited access to institutional credit.Thus, particularly for marginal and small farmers, reforming land lease markets to enable easier access to land, providing better access to institutional credit, and improving literacy to enable farmers to deploy abundant household labour in other occupations, are needed to address some of the observed imperfections.

Are Women Empowered in India? A Perspective of Women Participation in Mgnrega From Ladnu Block of Rajasthan, India

Women empowerment is about promoting their sense of self-worth and ability to make choices which may create social influence in society. Moreover, it emphasises sharing equal responsibility in the family as well as society in terms of accessing their choices without any hindrances, contributing economically to the family and society, and representing equally everywhere in the process of development. World’s largest employment guarantee programme, i.e. Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has provisioned providing 100 days of jobs to one-third of women in the country to ensure livelihood security and asset creation. The current paper tries to highlight the experiences of the beneficiaries from Ladnu block of Rajasthan about their improved lifestyles in terms of qualitative research and suggests ways to bridge the existing gaps to achieve the goal. In other words, it tries to explore whether women, as a beneficiary of the MGNREGA, are contributing to the programme or not, and creating assets for maintaining a better lifestyle. To answer this question, a blended methodology was implemented in two villages of Ladnu block of Rajasthan with 97 respondents. The results are positive from the numbers; however, to achieve the real goal of the Act, the government must actively mull over creating awareness among the community through Gram Panchayat (GP), orient the GP members towards implementing the Act with transparency, timely payment, increase the wage as per the inflation rate and converge different schemes with MGNREGA .

A structural equations approach to policy evaluation: Case study of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme

In this paper, we aim to present the use of structural equation modeling methodology to evaluate a conceptual model empirically, identifying factors critical to policy implementation. It is based on 311 responses from the mid-level implementers of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the flagship welfare programme of the Government of India.Our research documents administrative and governance factors, strategic communication, planning, resources, well-defined networks and demographics of the implementers as critical to policy implementation. We expect it will promote the cause of implementation evaluation and encourage interdisciplinary methodologies for public policy evaluation purposes.

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

Sustainable development is one of the ubiquitous paradigms of this century. Poverty, biodiversity loss and climate change are some of the obstacles to achieving sustainable development. To mitigate these encumbrances, countries have painstakingly adopted various policies and interventions. Public work programs, one of the initiatives targeting the construction of strong social safety nets through redistribution of wealth and generation of meaningful employment are increasingly being launched in developing countries. This paper is an attempt to examine the effects of phased implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) on the rejuvenation and restoration of community forests in India. Searches performed in multidisciplinary electronic databases (Web of Science, Scopus, Science Direct, PubMed, Emerald Insight, Google Scholar, Taylor and Francis Online, Wiley Online Library, and Springer Link) indicated that MGREGS is one of the largest labor guarantee schemes ever recorded in India and globally, and has holistically contributed to reforestation and afforestation through its land development themes to reduce vulnerability of rural communities to recurrent droughts, floods and improve soil moisture and fertility. It is evident that MGNREGS in synergy with the government forest development programs have the potential to promote social afforestation, reforestation and biodiversity conservation as witnessed in the Sundarbans. These have the potential to empower local people through creation of income generating activities and provision of local forest goods and services. However, the creation of forests as rural assets necessitates that emphasis should be laid on their maintenance so as to ensure that they are given their due importance for sustainable and long-term benefit of the poor rural households. This study highlights the need to perform a comprehensive assessment of forest assets that has been established through MNREGS across states in India.

Employment Guaranteed? Social Protection During a Pandemic

Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the potential of social protection programs in mitigating labor market shocks. We examine the role of one of the world’s largest employment guarantee schemes, India’s MG-NREGA, in cushioning job losses in one of the worst affected economies due to the pandemic. Our findings indicate that regions with greater historical state capacity to provide public work under the scheme showed relatively smaller employment losses during the pandemic. Consequently, an increase in state capacity by one MG-NREGA workday per rural inhabitant in a district reduced job losses in rural areas in April–August 2020 by 7% overall and by 74% for rural women, over baseline employment rate. These cushioning effects strengthened as the mobility restrictions eased and were larger for women who were less mobile and less skilled. Our results suggest that employment guarantee programs can protect livelihoods, but for certain demographic groups relatively more than others depending on the nature and skill level of work offered.

Spillover Impacts on Education from Employment Guarantees

Abstract Programs that provide lower-skill employment are a popular anti-poverty strategy in developing countries, with India's employment guarantee program (MGNREGA) employing adults in 23 percent of Indian households. MGNREGA has reduced rural poverty, but some have raised concerns that guaranteeing lower-skill (or uncredentialed) employment opportunities may discourage investment in human capital and long-run income growth. Using large-scale administrative data and household survey data, I estimate precise spillover impacts on education that reject substantive declines in children's education from the government's rollout of MGNREGA. Further, I estimate these small negative impacts are inexpensive to counteract, particularly compared with MGNREGA expenditures on rural employment and poverty alleviation.

Mediating Effects on Poverty Reduction in India Through Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme

The employment opportunities in rural areas have signifi cantly decreased for the last few decades in India. Th erefore, Government of India introduced Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGP) to create employment opportunities for ru ral people. Th e Programme is considered as a “silver bullet” for eradicating rural poverty and unemployment in India. Th e purpose of this empirical research study is to develop a new model for poverty reduction in rural India through this Programme. Th e novelty of this article is an attempt to develop an empirical research model that assists the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme when mapping the level of economics service quality and thereby enhance the same. Th is Programme provides an alternative source of livelihood, which will have an impact on reducing migration, restricting child labor, alleviating poverty, and making villages self-sustaining through productive assets creation such as road construction, cleaning up of water tanks, soil and water conservation work, etc. for which it has been considered as the largest anti-poverty programme in the world. Th e paper critically examines the implementation process of this Programme and its impact on tribal livelihoods. Th e following research methodology is used in the article: the data were collected using a structured questionnaire. Th e sampling procedure used for this study is stratifi ed random sampling. Th e stratifi cation is done based on the Taluks are Kumbakonam (Th anjavur District), Keeranur (Pudukottai District) and Nagappatinam (Nagappatinam District) of Tamilnadu state of South-India for the nature of region South, East, Centre, West and North while selecting the MGNREGP Employees from each category, non-probabilistic convenience and judgmental sampling technique is used. Th e fi ndings and conclusions of the study reveal that millions of rural poor with the inclusion of new works under this Programme could able to get some employment which supports their livelihoods. Eff orts are exerted to improve more transparency and accountability in implementing this programme to ensure that the benefi ts reach out to the poor and the needy villagers. Th e regression analysis revealed that the Poverty Eradication on the various dimensions of Economic Development, infl uenced Economic Development followed by Social Development. Th e visual representation of results suggest that the relationships between the dimensions of Economic Development, Social development resulted in a signifi cant impact on the mediated factor ‘Poverty Eradication’. Th e paper suggests the policy framework for the stakeholders in eff ective implementation of the Programme.

Has India’s Employment Guarantee Program Achieved Intended Targets?

This paper explores the performance of the world’s largest employment guarantee program, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in India, both nationally and through a sub-national-level comparison based on key performance indicators viz. (i) financial indicators, (ii) physical performance indicators, and (iii) inclusiveness indicators. The paper is based on administrative data taken from the Ministry of Rural Development from 2006 to 2019. Despite sharp increases in fund allocation, total expenditures, and utilization rates, there was deceleration in majority of physical performance indicators after 2016, including total person-days employment and person-days of employment per household, with wide variation in sub-national level implementation capabilities. The finding also rejects the falsity of saturation of MGNREGA work in the rural areas, which is reflected in a strong positive correlation between fund allocation and employment generation. Its broader objective of social safety net for vulnerable people in rural areas shows an achievement, although with some gaps in implementation. JEL classification: H53, J43, P25

Effect of Female Employment on Child Educational Outcomes: Evidence From an Employment Guarantee Program

This paper examines how the child’s educational outcomes are impacted by the mother’s participation in an employment guarantee program versus mother’s participation in the regular labor force in India. Using the survey data from India Human Development Survey I and II, I estimate this effect by analyzing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) 2005. I use household specific and parent specific characteristics as controls. Regression analysis and propensity score matching techniques are used to determine the causal relationship. The results show that the participation of mothers in MGNREGA work leads to a decrease in the test scores of the children. While MGNREGA is an important source of employment for households in the rural areas, especially women, this paper shows that increased participation can lead to negative spillover effects for the children.

Natural resource wealth and crime: The role of international price shocks and public policy

An extensive literature highlights the potential detrimental effects of natural resource wealth on social, economic and political outcomes. We study a largely unexplored relationship — the impact of natural resource wealth on criminal activity. Our empirical strategy exploits price fluctuations in 15 internationally traded minerals to study the impact of mineral wealth on local crime levels in South Africa — leveraging detailed data from 1084 police precincts over 10 years. In contrast to prior work, we find that increased mineral wealth leads to less crime. An exploration of mechanisms suggest that the effect is due to changes in employment opportunities created by the mining industry. Our results suggest that low international mineral prices can cause surges in crime. To investigate how resilience against such surges can be achieved, we study a government employment guarantee program and show that it was effective in reducing the crime response to international price fluctuations.

Economic Impact of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme on Rural Women Labourers of Tamil Nadu

This study analyzed the economic impact of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGP) on women labourers in rural Tamil Nadu. MGNREGP benefits the rural poor by providing equal wages to both men and women, guarantees 100 days of employment, and provides worksite facilities. This study was conducted in the newly established Tirupattur District of Tamil Nadu in 2018-2019. Tirupattur is one of the 20 blocks in the Vellore District. In Tamil Nadu, MGNREGP was implemented in three phases. In the Vellore district, MGNREGP was implemented under the third phase. A multistage random sampling technique was employed to collect the data from 99 sample households in Karupanur village panchayat. The findings revealed that all women labourers participated in the programme irrespective of their age groups, and the majority of them belonged to the economically weaker sections of society. The study showed that generally, the married women participated in the programme since their husbands could not manage the home with their little earnings. The majority of them, around 93.94 percent, were unaware of the worksite facilities like drinking water, rest shed, first aid box, and creche for their children. The sampled women labourers were unaware of compensation for injuries at the worksite and ex-gratia payment for death and disability. The majority of the scheduled caste women labourers spent their income on children's education. The Chi-square test revealed that women labourers found MGNREGP was very useful irrespective of their communities.

Rural employment guarantee programme in India and its impact on household educational decisions: A focus on private coaching

AbstractThis paper evaluates the impact of household participation in a large‐scale public works programme in India on educational decisions including children schooling and expenditure incurred on private coaching and other educational components. Exogenous variation in proximity of households to a river is used to control for the potential endogeneity. The findings indicate positive impact of the programme on expenditure on private coaching while having no impact on other educational expenditures indicating higher income elasticity of private coaching. The paper thus emphasizes on various direct and indirect benefits of the programme which necessitate its effective implementation at the local level.

Employment Guaranteed? Social Protection During a Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the potential of social protection programs in mitigating labor market shocks. We examine the role of one of the world's largest employment guarantee schemes, India's MG-NREGA, in cushioning job losses in one of the worst affected economies due to the pandemic. Our findings indicate that regions with greater historical state capacity to provide public workdays under the scheme generated relatively higher employment during the pandemic. Consequently, an increase in state capacity by one MG-NREGA workday per rural inhabitant in a district reduced job losses in rural areas in April-August 2020 by 7% overall and by 74% for rural women, over baseline employment rate. These cushioning effects strengthened as the mobility restrictions eased and were larger for women who were less mobile and less skilled. Our results suggest that employment guarantee programs can protect livelihoods, but for certain demographic groups relatively more than others depending on the nature and skill level of work offered.

Ad Hoc Rationing, Capacity Bias, Information Asymmetry and Elite Capture of MGNREGA in Karnataka: Policy Perspectives on Poverty and Regional Balance

Poverty is related to, yet distinct from, inequality. Inequality is unevenly distributed across social groups, geography, gender and age cohorts, resulting in regional imbalance across states and regions within states and causing concentration of poverty in certain social groups, gender and age cohorts. National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme is a flagship poverty elimination programme, which should essentially address both poverty and inequality at both interpersonal and regional levels. But does a rights-based, demand-driven, universal workfare programme having self-selection paradigm address poverty and regional imbalance in practice? This question requires to be thoroughly examined to draw policy lessons.

MGNREGA in the Times of COVID-19 and Beyond: Can India do More with Less?

Covid-19 has ushered in a renewed focus on health, sanitisation and, in unexpected ways, on the need for productive employment opportunities in rural India. MGNREGA, the rural employment guarantee programme, has had a mixed track record in terms of providing adequate employment to those who need it the most, the quality of asset creation and adequacy of wages offered. This paper makes a case for reorienting a small portion of MGNREGA spending to create micro-entrepreneurs out of the ‘reverse migrating’ masons, electricians, plumbers and others in rural areas who can directly contribute to augmenting health and sanitization infrastructure in the likely new normal. This will provide relief to those whose livelihoods have been severely impacted and eventually lower dependence on public finances. We propose approval of a new work type for sanitization works without any hard asset creation under MGNREGA and roping in the private sector for its project management skills to quickly skill up the returning migrants as well as to match work with workers on an ongoing basis.

Spillover Impacts on Education from Employment Guarantees

Programs that provide lower-skill employment are a popular anti-poverty strategy in developing countries, with India’s employment-guarantee program (MGNREGA) employing adults in 23% of Indian households. MGNREGA has reduced rural poverty, but some have raised concerns that guaranteeing lower-skill employment opportunities may discourage investment in human capital and long-run income growth. Using large-scale administrative data and household survey data, I estimate precise spillover impacts on education that reject substantive declines in children’s education from the government’s rollout of MGNREGA. Further, I estimate that these small negative impacts are inexpensive to counteract, particularly compared to MGNREGA expenditures on rural employment and poverty alleviation.

Government Employment Guarantee, Labor Supply, and Firms’ Reaction: Evidence from the Largest Public Workfare Program in the World

AbstractUsing establishment-level data, we examine the impact of the Indian government’s employment guarantee program on labor and firm behavior. We exploit the staggered implementation of the program for identification and find that the program led to a 10% reduction in the permanent workforce in firms. Firms responded to the adverse labor-supply shock by resorting to increased mechanization. This significantly increased the firms’ cost of production, leading to a decline in net profits and productivity. These effects manifested primarily in firms paying low wages, firms having low labor productivity and greater sales volatility, and firms located in states with pro-employer labor regulations.