MGNREGA, A Reality or Rhetoric

Abstract

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is a major policy undertaken by the Indian government.  However, whether MGNREGA will continue to yield the same positive benefits that it brought forth in the first three years of its implementation is a vital question that needs to be examined. The paper attempts to respond to this critical issue by portraying various aspects of MGNREGA’s advancement. The primary focus is to examine its impact on the human resource base of rural India. Has it energized, mobilized, empowered, and delivered to India’s poorest and most marginalized rural people? The paper begins by explicating the details of the Act, its innovative characteristics, its institutional hurdles and its impact on rural-urban migration. It also includes the bottlenecks in the money flow, women participation in the employment, the governance and challenges in the implementation of the act, the factors that support its future viability and opportunities for policy actions are scrutinized and presented .It proposes a mechanism for identifying new and relevant projects.