IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/inijae/345169.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effectiveness of MGNREGS in COVID-19 Lockdown of 2020: A Case of Selected Villages of Palghar District, Maharashtra

Author

Listed:
  • Atri, Sripad
  • Maity, Sansiddho
  • Namburi, Aditya
  • Sateesh, Arun
  • Gore, Pratik
  • Miglani, Varun

Abstract

The national lockdown of 2020 implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has put Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in the national spotlight because of its position as the support system for the nation’s most vulnerable. Its effectiveness is imperative to dampen the impact of the lockdown, such as unemployment and reverse labour migration. Contextually, existing literature details the successes and failures of MGNREGS across districts in India in a pre-lockdown time frame with little focus on the lockdown as well as India’s newest district – Palghar. To fill the gap in research, the paper uses secondary data from the Ministry of Rural Development to understand the wages and employment in Palghar district. Additionally, primary data from structured telephonic interviews of 40 beneficiaries and semi-structured interviews of Sarpanches of the four villages were used to understand the perception of beneficiaries on the scheme and the implementation process. The study finds that while MGNREGS provided employment to the returning migrants in Palghar, the beneficiaries received the wages below the notified wage rate. The untimely fund transfers created fund shortages and forced some villages (Sarpanches) to rely on borrowing for MGNREGS activities. Overall, the beneficiaries felt general dissatisfaction with the employment opportunity, asset creation and its overall impact on their livelihood. Doubling the fund allocation for Maharashtra would help in providing close to the 100 days of wage employment.

Suggested Citation

  • Atri, Sripad & Maity, Sansiddho & Namburi, Aditya & Sateesh, Arun & Gore, Pratik & Miglani, Varun, 2021. "Effectiveness of MGNREGS in COVID-19 Lockdown of 2020: A Case of Selected Villages of Palghar District, Maharashtra," Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, Indian Society of Agricultural Economics, vol. 0(Number 3), September.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:inijae:345169
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.345169
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/345169/files/Effectiveness%20of%20MGNREGS%20in%20COVID-19.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.345169?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Girish Kumar Agrawal, 2019. "Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act: Design Failure, Implementation Failure or Both?," Management and Labour Studies, XLRI Jamshedpur, School of Business Management & Human Resources, vol. 44(4), pages 349-368, November.
    2. Diego Maiorano & Upasak Das & Silvia Masiero, 2018. "Decentralisation, clientelism and social protection programmes: a study of India’s MGNREGA," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(4), pages 536-549, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. William Ascher, 2021. "Coping with intelligence deficits in poverty-alleviation policies in low-income countries," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 54(2), pages 345-370, June.
    2. Danielle Resnick, 2022. "Does Accountability Undermine Service Delivery? The Impact of Devolving Agriculture in Ghana," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 34(2), pages 1003-1029, April.
    3. Narayan Chandra Nayak & Bimal Kishore Sahoo & Mamata Jenamani & Alok Ranjan Mohanty & Runa Sen Chatterjee, 2021. "Does Convergence of Rural Development Schemes Improve Household Welfare? An Investigation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in Odisha, India," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 64(4), pages 1023-1042, December.
    4. Chau, Nancy H. & Liu, Yanyan & Soundararajan, Vidhya, 2021. "Political activism as a determinant of strategic transfers: Evidence from an indian public works program," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    5. Dutta, Anwesha & Fischer, Harry W., 2021. "The local governance of COVID-19: Disease prevention and social security in rural India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    6. Prasenjit Sarkhel & Anirban Mukherjee, 2021. "Land Acquisition, Markets and Political Networks: Evidence from the Indian Sundarbans," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 16(2), pages 194-219, August.
    7. Sanjiv Kumar & S. Madheswaran & B. P. Vani, 2021. "Response of Poverty Pockets to the Right-based Demand-driven MGNREGA Programme," Review of Development and Change, , vol. 26(1), pages 5-24, June.
    8. Kartik Misra, 2022. "No employment without participation: An evaluation of India's employment programme in eastern Uttar Pradesh," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 40(6), November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Labor and Human Capital;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:inijae:345169. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isaeeea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.