IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/zvtua_v1.html

Preventing Corruption: Ups and Downs of India’s Employment Guarantee

Author

Listed:
  • Drèze, Jean
  • Somanchi, Anmol

    (IDinsight)

Abstract

This paper reexamines evidence of corruption in India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the largest public-works programme in the world. We estimate “validation ratios”, defined as the proportion of MGNREGA person-days that are reflected in independent surveys such as the National Sample Surveys and the India Human Development Survey. In the initial years of the programme, estimated validation ratios were as low as 50% or so, but they rose steadily, and by 2011-12, the bulk of MGNREGA employment was validated by two independent national surveys. The more recent Periodic Labour Force Surveys, however, suggest that validation ratios fell again after that, and may be as low as 40% or so today. In other words, MGNREGA seems to be back to square one as far as corruption is concerned. We note that PLFS data on MGNREGA may not be entirely reliable, yet the evidence of resurgent corruption is hard to dismiss. We discuss possible reasons for this setback. Briefly, MGNREGA seems to be trapped in a vicious circle of underfunding, erratic wage payments, worker discouragement and high leakages.

Suggested Citation

  • Drèze, Jean & Somanchi, Anmol, 2026. "Preventing Corruption: Ups and Downs of India’s Employment Guarantee," SocArXiv zvtua_v1, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:zvtua_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/zvtua_v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/69dcbe9fde07aa6572e1c14e/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/zvtua_v1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Karthik Muralidharan & Paul Niehaus & Sandip Sukhtankar, 2023. "General Equilibrium Effects of (Improving) Public Employment Programs: Experimental Evidence From India," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(4), pages 1261-1295, July.
    2. Suguna Bheemarasetti & Anuradha De & Rajendran Narayanan & Parul Saboo & Laavanya Tamang, 2025. "MGNREGA as a Technological Laboratory: Analysing Wage Payment Delays as a Result of Two Digital Interventions," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 68(2), pages 681-706, June.
    3. C. Justin Cook & Manisha Shah, 2022. "Aggregate Effects from Public Works: Evidence from India," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 104(4), pages 797-806, October.
    4. Karthik Muralidharan & Paul Niehaus & Sandip Sukhtankar, 2016. "Building State Capacity: Evidence from Biometric Smartcards in India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(10), pages 2895-2929, October.
    5. Sonalde Desai & Prem Vashishtha & Omkar Joshi, 2015. "Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act: A Catalyst for Rural Transformation," Working Papers id:7259, eSocialSciences.
    6. Narayanan, Sudha & Das, Upasak & Liu, Yanyan & Barrett, Christopher B., 2017. "The “Discouraged Worker Effect” in Public Works Programs: Evidence from the MGNREGA in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 31-44.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fetzer, Thiemo, 2019. "Can Workfare Programs Moderate Conflict? Evidence from India," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1220, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    2. Deininger, Klaus & Liu, Yanyan, 2019. "Heterogeneous welfare impacts of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme: Evidence from Andhra Pradesh, India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 98-111.
    3. Deininger, Klaus & Nagarajan, Hari K & Singh, Sudhir K, 2020. "Women's political leadership and economic empowerment: Evidence from public works in India," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 277-291.
    4. Klonner, Stefan & Oldiges, Christian, 2022. "The welfare effects of India’s rural employment guarantee," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    5. Thiemo Fetzer, 2020. "Can Workfare Programs Moderate Conflict? Evidence from India," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(6), pages 3337-3375.
    6. Aanchal Bagga & Marcus Holmlund & Nausheen Khan & Subha Mani & Eric Mvukiyehe & Patrick Premand, 2026. "Do Public Works Programs Have Sustained Impacts? A Review of Experimental Studies from LMICs," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 41(1), pages 1-38.
    7. Tagat, Anirudh, 2020. "Female matters: Impact of a workfare program on intra-household female decision-making in rural India," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 20(C).
    8. Behrer, A.Patrick & Pullabhotla, Hemant, 2025. "Spilling over: The benefits of public works projects for groundwater in India," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    9. Karthik Muralidharan & Paul Niehaus, 2017. "Experimentation at Scale," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(4), pages 103-124, Fall.
    10. Parantap Basu & Rajesh Raj Natarajan & Kunal Sen, 2020. "Administrative failures in anti-poverty programmes and household welfare: An investigation of India's employment guarantee programme," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-41, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    11. Stein, Merlin, 2021. "Re-evaluating RCTs with nightlights - An example from biometric smartcards in India," University of Tübingen Working Papers in Business and Economics 152, University of Tuebingen, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, School of Business and Economics.
    12. Parmar, Divya & Banerjee, Aneesh, 2019. "Impact of an employment guarantee scheme on utilisation of maternal healthcare services: Results from a natural experiment in India," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 222(C), pages 285-293.
    13. Parantap Basu & Rajesh Raj S. N & Kunal Sen, 2024. "Payment delay in workfare programmes and household welfare: Theory and some evidence from India," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 92(2), pages 93-121, March.
    14. Chau, Nancy H. & Liu, Yanyan & Soundararajan, Vidhya, 2017. "Political activism as a determinant of clientelistic transfers: Evidence from an Indian public works program," IFPRI discussion papers 1700, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    15. Sandeep Tripathi & Pushpender Yadav, 2026. "Machine Learning Approach for Decoding the Efficiency of the World's Largest Welfare Scheme ‘MGNREGA’: A Deep Dive Into Welfare State Dynamics and Local Heterogeneity," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(2), pages 414-434, March.
    16. Gehrke, Esther & Hartwig, Renate, 2018. "Productive effects of public works programs: What do we know? What should we know?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 111-124.
    17. Ihsaan BASSIER & Joshua BUDLENDER, 2024. "Methods for Credible Evaluation of Programme Stimulus Effects in South Africa," Working Paper 53315978-8164-44f9-8141-5, Agence française de développement.
    18. Girish Bahal, 2020. "Estimating the Impact of Welfare Programs on Agricultural Output: Evidence from India," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(3), pages 982-998, May.
    19. repec:osf:osfxxx:mpksj_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Sheahan, Megan & Liu, Yanyan & Narayanan, Sudha & Barrett, Christopher B., 2015. "Disaggregated labor supply implications of guaranteed employment in India," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 237345, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    21. Ohnsorge, Franziska Lieselotte & Rogerson,Richard & Xie, Zoe Leiyu, 2024. "Jobless Development," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10928, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:zvtua_v1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.