Role of employment generation schemes in controlling public exodus: a case of MGNREGS

Unemployment is considered to be the greatest obstacle in the way of economic development of our country. A variety of programmes have been launched with a view to eradicate the problem of unemployment. The flagship programme of the Government to provide job guarantee scheme for rural Indians was NREGA 2005, the target of which is to provide at least 100 days of employment within the periphery of their native place. The main objective of the present study is to identify that whether MGNREGS has been able to contain public exodus or not. Using secondary data from various published and un-published sources for various years, this research paper scrutinizes the role of employment generation schemes in controlling public exodus, particularly that of MGNREGS. From the literature, also supported by the micro-assessment, it can be concluded MGNREGS is helping poor and weaker section of the community by providing employment at crucial period of a year. In principal, MGNREGS can help to reduce temporary migration but is unproductive in long period, when several factors would change together. It has been seen that the objectives achieved under the scheme are not enough for the reduction of public exodus. Many factors such as absence of landed assets and means of irrigation, accentuated water scarcity, falling production in agriculture sector, etc. affect the rural population to move to urban areas.