The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to Uplift the Downtrodden: A Study in Odisha

Abstract

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is one the major development programme planned by United Progressive Alliance Government to improve the living conditions and security of the people living in rural India. The unique scheme was introduced primarily to provide 100 days of guaranteed wage employment to every rural household in a financial year. Over the last 8 years, this scheme could provide employment to 354,362,794 rural households and generated 164,538.15 lakh man days of employment in India. On the basis of the statistics provided by government and other authentic sources, this paper is an endeavour to analyse the role of MGNREGS in generation of employment for the underprivileged in rural part of Odisha, India. Important indicators considered to understand the performance of MGNREGS are – registered households, job cards, employment generation in person days, funds issued vs. used and employment generation for women, schedule caste (SC) and schedule tribe (ST) among others. A detailed analysis reveals that over the last 8 years, this scheme could provide employment to 11,894,837 rural households and generated 4,900.74 lakh man days of employment in Odisha. The physical performances of the scheme in generation of average person days of employment during 2006–2007 to 2012–2013 have only been 44 per household per year which is way below the promised minimum employment of 100 days. Besides, the scheme was able to provide employment only to 27.92% of the total job card holders. Even the participation of SC and ST in this scheme as inception stood at 3,130.88 lakh person days. In the last 8 years, the average percentage of households with 100 days of employment stands at a gloomy 7%. These figures are discouraging and indicate that the programme has not been able to tackle the problem of unemployment in rural Odisha. Besides, the study also suggests that rolling out schemes without proper monitoring and evaluation system is not going to improve the socio-economic conditions in India. This paper is also an attempt to sketch a plan for improvement of this unique scheme of 100 days of guaranteed wage employment and maintain its credibility.