Implication of MGNREGA Activities in Rural Employment Opportunities – A Micro Level Analysis

Abstract

The National Rural Employment Guantee Act later it was renamed as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee(MGNREGA)2005 states that its main objective is to provide enhancement of livelihood security of the households in rural areas of the country by providing at least 100 days later 150 days in drought hit districts(2012) guaranteed wage employment to every household in unskilled manual work ( Ministry of Law and Justice,2005) event in the history of rural development policies in India as well as in the history of poverty reduction strategies in the World.The Government of India has already launched anti-poverty programmes like Integrated Rural Development Programmes (IRDP and Jawahar Rojgar Yojana (JRY) to increase the level of employment, income, asset creation and thereby enhance the standard of living of the rural poor particularly the agrarian farming community. These programmes, strive hard to reduce the rural poverty in some extent in the rural areas. These programmes of the government are, no doubt, important but the size of the problem is simply too large as compared to the size of the anti-poverty programmes. There is sustained attention is needed to raise the economic status of the rural poor particularly the rural agricultural labourers by the planners and policy makers. As a matter of fact, the vicious circle of present day stagnation in the economic field begins from drastic fall in down ofyield per hectare that leads to low agriculture production that directly hit the entire economy growth path. While it is true that the development of the agricultural sector is linked with the development of the non-agricultural sector, as no economy can be isolated from the rest of the national economy, no increase agriculture production can be possible and effective, even though there may be technological improvement without an active and efficient participation of the agricultural labour. And the social and economic disabilities and disparities of agricultural labourers, while in themselves are no small part of the problem, stand in the way of agriculture labour for active and efficient participation. This is the main research problem discovered in the present study.The present study is focused on Implication of MGNREGA Activities in Rural Employment Opportunities – A Micro Level Analysis by taking a case study of Thethupatti village of Dindigul district of Tamil Nadu should take necessary steps to provide employment opportunities through MGNREGA and thereby enhance purchasing power of the landless agricultural labour household in the study area.