MGNREGA, About, Salient Features and Benefits

 

National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (or, NREGA No 42, later renamed as the “Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act”, MGNREGA), is an Indian labour law and social security measure that aims to guarantee the ‘right to work’.

It aims to enhance livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.

The act was first proposed in 1991 by P.V. Narasimha Rao. In 2006, it was finally accepted in the parliament and commenced implementation in 625 districts of India. Based on this pilot experience, NREGA was scoped up to covered all the districts of India from 1 April 2008.The statute is hailed by the government as “the largest and most ambitious social security and public works programme in the world”.In its World Development Report 2014, the World Bank termed it a “stellar example of rural development”.

The MGNREGA was initiated with the objective of “enhancing livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year, to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work”.Another aim of MGNREGA is to create durable assets (such as roads, canals, ponds, wells). Employment is to be provided within 5 km of an applicant’s residence, and minimum wages are to be paid. If work is not provided within 15 days of applying, applicants are entitled to an unemployment allowance. Thus, employment under MGNREGA is a legal entitlement.

Key Features of MGNREGA

• MGNREGA is one of the largest work guarantee programmes in the world.
• Objective: The primary objective of the scheme is to guarantee 100 days of employment in every financial year to adult members of any rural household willing to do public work-related unskilled manual work.
• Legal Right to Work: Unlike earlier employment guarantee schemes, the act aims at addressing the causes of chronic poverty through a rights-based framework.
  
  • At least one-third of beneficiaries have to be women.
  • Wages must be paid according to the statutory minimum wages specified for agricultural labourers in the state under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948.
• Demand-Driven Scheme: The most important part of MGNREGA’s design is its legally-backed guarantee for any rural adult to get work within 15 days of demanding it, failing which an ‘unemployment allowance’ must be given.
  
  • This demand-driven scheme enables the self-selection of workers.
• Decentralised planning: There is an emphasis on strengthening the process of decentralisation by giving a significant role in Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in planning and implementing these works.
  
• The act mandates Gram sabhas to recommend the works that are to be undertaken and at least 50% of the works must be executed by them.

Benefits of MGNREGA

The benefits of the MGNREGA scheme can be summed up as follows:

• It helps boost the consumption growth of the country by increasing the spending power in the rural areas.
• It enhances the power of the Gram Panchayats.
• It provides the guarantee of paid employment in the rural regions of the country.
• It promotes the social inclusion of the rural population of the country.
• It ensures better usage of the land and water resources of the rural regions of the country.
• It ensures better usage of the unutilised and under-utilised labour resources.
• It promotes the betterment of infrastructure in the Indian rural areas.