Analysing the Impact of Direct Benefit Transfer in Mahatma Gandhi NREGS

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), implemented by the Ministry of Rural Development, is flagship programme of the government that directly touches lives of the poor and promotes inclusive growth. MGNREGA is the first ever law that internationally guarantees wage employment at an unprecedented scale. The primary objective of the Act is augmenting wage employment, and its auxiliary objective is strengthening natural resource management through works that address causes of chronic poverty like drought, deforestation and soil erosion and so encourage sustainable development. The process outcomes include strengthening grass-root processes of democracy and infusing transparency and accountability in governance. One of them is enabling direct transfer of payments to bank/post office accounts of beneficiaries electronically, resulting in reduction in delays in crediting the bank/post office accounts of the workers and hence the delays in payment of wages.

Keeping this view, the authors have made an attempt to review the performance of direct transfer of wages to worker's account by electronic means; a direct benefit transfer systemhas been developed for MGNREGA as the main objective of this paper. This system leverages payment gateways such as Aadhaar Payment BridgeNational Electronic Fund Transfer Real Time Gross Settlement National Electronic Clearing Service Renewal Energy Certificate System and core banking solution of banks.