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This article is an attempt to highlight issues around the implementation of NREGA with a focus on its institutions, governance and innovations. The main proposition considered is that institutions and governance play an important role in determining the functioning of NREGA, and the trajectory of its success. The attempt is to identify the conditions for success (or failure) in the process, to draw lessons for mid-course corrections to the programme. This includes examining political, administrative and bureaucratic dynamics that may ensure better realisation of the 'right to work'. Based on a field study in three Indian states, it was found that differential impacts and achievements of the NREGA are related to variations in the commitment of local leadership, levels of institutional preparedness and governance capacities. The experience of these states offers certain insights which may help improve implementation policy of the NREGA. (IDS Bulletin/GIGA)

In 2005, India's parliament passed the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which is the central government's response to the constitutionally manifested right to work and means to promote livelihood security in India's rural areas. To this end, the Act guarantees 100 days of annual employment at statutory minimum wage rates to any rural household whose adult members are willing to do unskilled manual work. The manual work needs to create sustainable assets that promote the economic and infrastructure development of villages. Implemented in three phases beginning in 2006, the Act extended to all of rural India in April 2008. NREGA is an innovative answer to the long-standing problem of providing social safety nets in rural areas. The overall objective of this paper is to bring focus on Issues and challenges of MGNREGA and to evaluate the performance since its enactment. Apart from academic perspective on the need, relevance and justification for the MGNREGA, it also seeks to establish a dialogue between academics and policy makers with those who are working at grass root level to monitor the functioning of the MGNREGA. Another objective of the paper is to bring together all these diverse experiences on a common platform to arrive at some common understandings on the problems faced in implementation of MGNREGA and also to learn from the successes in implementing MGNREGA.

The objective of this analysis is mainly to construct an intuitive measure of the performance of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in India. The focus is on divergence between demand and supply at the district level. Some related issues addressed are: (i) whether the gap between demand and supply responds to poverty; and (ii) whether recent hikes in NREGS wages are inflationary. Our analysis confirms responsiveness of the positive gap between demand and supply to poverty. Also, apprehensions expressed about the inflationary potential of recent hikes in NREGS wages have been confirmed. More importantly, higher NREGS wages are likely to undermine self-selection of the poor in it.

The enactment of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) 2005, with its rights-based approach through a time-bound employment guarantee and legal framework, has marked a paradigm shift not only from other wage-employment programmes hitherto pursued in India, but also from neo-liberal reforms undertaken since 1991. The Act came into force on 2 February 2006 and was implemented in a phased manner. In Phase I it was introduced in 200 of the most backward districts of the country; Phase II added another 130 districts in 2007-08; and in Phase III the scheme was further extended to the remaining 274 rural districts of India from 1 April 2008.