Leveraging public works for sustainable and resilient livelihoods: Four case studies from India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act

Despite significant improvements in poverty and standard of living over the last two decades, India continues to face challenges, including slow improvements in health and nutrition indicators and in aspects of women’s empowerment and in generating opportunities for sustainable livelihoods. At the same time, climate-related events are increasing in frequency with associated risks. Women and other marginalized populations are often at greater risk from these events due to their relatively lower access to resources, lower mobility and greater dependence on common property resources. Social protection can be an effective instrument to promote resilience. One such large social protection program with significant potential is India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, or the MGNREGA, one of the largest public works programs in the world. This report provides insights from four case studies linked to the MGNREGA and implemented under the Indo-German Enhancing Rural Resilience through Appropriate Development Actions, or ERADA project. ERADA was implemented in 8 blocks of 4 large Indian states, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand. The ERADA project had three broad objectives - of enhancing natural capital, green recovery through green enterprises, and convergence of resources and networks - and identified the MGNREGA as a critical social safety net on which to base its activities. While much has been written on the impact of the MGNREGA on “first-order” outcomes such as wages, employment, rural-urban distress migration and other household welfare outcomes, we know considerably less about the use of the assets created under the program, and even less about the potential of these assets to support and sustain value chain activities.