Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act: Design Failure, Implementation Failure or Both?

Abstract

The Government of India implemented MGNREGA in 2005–06 to provide social security cum wage employment on demand, initially in 200 districts and was later extended to all of India. The programme expenditure has now ballooned to over 60,000 crore per year in 2018–19, for creating about 267.95 crore man-days of employment. The programme has been beset with a host of issues since its inception, raising serious doubts about its impact in achieving designed objectives. The programme was designed with host of objectives starting from social security to providing livelihood security to wage employment on demand to arresting migration to deep rooting democracy. All prior research looked at specific objectives in a particular geographic area. This article examines the programme achievement data and examines the same against programme objectives and argues that the programme may be flawed in design objectives and inadequate programme architecture. Contrasting the programme data with census raises further issues about reliability.