Employment Generation Under MGNREGA: Spatial and Temporal Performance Across States

Annually over 50 million households that account for more than one-third of households living in rural India do claim a stake in employment under the MGNREGA programme. The total volume of employment generated under the programme from 2006–07 to 2015–16 has been around 19 billion person days. The share of the SCs, STs and women in the total employment generated has been 27, 22 and 48%, respectively. On average, beneficiary households have obtained 45 days of employment in a year, as against 100 days of employment per household as promised under the Act of MGNREGA. A total amount of ₹ 3064 billion (i.e. around USD 46 billion) has already been spent on these programmes till mid of 2015. Most of the works undertaken in MGNREGA are of the water management, village level road and environmental protection. In fact, it devised a tool at the micro level to provide adaptation in the hands of the locals to better cope with risks and uncertainty caused by the climate change. The MGNREGA programme has provided some level of livelihood security to the rural households in a crisis situation when getting work elsewhere becomes difficult because of the recurring off-seasons in agriculture and related other shocks in the economy. MGNREGA programme has been successful in providing food security to the households in the villages by providing them extra purchasing power. In order to have smooth availability of employment in the rural economy, the state government agencies can carry out MGNREGA activities more during the agricultural off-season, which will also ensure employment security to rural poor within their vicinity all round the year.