MGNREGA: Ensures Guaranteed Wage Employment in Rural Area

Abstract

The Mahatma Gandhi Nation Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is perhaps the world largest right to work model being implemented in India. The most distinctive feature of MGNREGA from the earlier rural public works programme is that it has provided a legal entitlement to work on demand. But unfortunately MGNREGA is not meeting demand for wage employment in rural areas it may be because poor transparency and accountability and lack of capacity on the part of Panchayats. Lack of awareness among villagers about the provisions of the Act and not using proper strategy for awareness building is another factor which is responsible for lacuna due to which proper implementation of MGNREGS is remain challenge in rural areas.

 There are still lots of problems in the implementation of MGNREGA. Still, it has not reached the poor and needy due to lack of interest of the implementing agencies especially local selfgovernance in rural area. MGNERGS needs more creative innovative and time bound efforts from the local governance institutions to meet the demand for wage employment in rural area. Gram Sabha and Social audit can play crucial role to implement these scheme.

 The present paper is based of secondary source of literature, discusses about whether MGNREGA really meeting demands of wage employment at village level and suggests mechanism for effective implementation of MGNREGA.