MGNREGA, introduced by the Government of India in 2005, is a revolutionary programme enacted by law which guarantees hundred days of employment in a year to each rural household who are willing to provide unskilled labour. The secondary objective of the programme is creating sustainable assets in rural India which in turn strengthen natural resource management and help address the issues of chronic poverty in the long run. The programme has created ample opportunity for wage employment among rural masses and set a number of examples in building quality, durable and sustainable asset base in rural India though there are many criticisms. A number of studies have been conducted to review the performance of the programme across periphery from different perspectives. This paper is an attempt to study the performance of the programme in terms of wage employment generation and asset creation. Secondary data available from the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India and other study reports have been used for the review. This paper has critically analyzed the progress of the programme nine years after introduction. Analysis of data reflects that the programme has created huge employment opportunities in rural India but has not been showing progressive trends from last couple of years. It has not been successful to include socially excluded families especially Scheduled Tribes significantly though participation of women is showing satisfactory trend. In terms of asset creation, where the plan has been prepared in a participatory manner, actual need of people has been captured and technical designs are taken into consideration, qualities of assets created proved to be durable and sustainable. The paper concludes with some suggestions for improvement for the both aspects.
Asset creation, employment generation, MGNREGA, PRIs, wage employment
