IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/devpol/v36y2018is1po586-o604.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does Guaranteed employment promote resilience to climate change? The case of India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)

Author

Listed:
  • Rachel Godfrey†Wood
  • Benjamin C. R. Flower

Abstract

India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is the largest labour guarantee scheme in the world, offering 100 days of paid labour to every rural household. This article reviews the growing evidence base, assessing the extent to which the scheme can be said to contribute to resilience to climate change, based on its effectiveness as a safety net and driver of household accumulation, its ability to create assets which build collective resilience, and its support for transformations of exploitative social relations. The article concludes that the MGNREGA has already made a major contribution to resilience, but requires improvements in governance and state capacity to maximize its contribution.

Suggested Citation

  • Rachel Godfrey†Wood & Benjamin C. R. Flower, 2018. "Does Guaranteed employment promote resilience to climate change? The case of India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 36(S1), pages 586-604, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:devpol:v:36:y:2018:i:s1:p:o586-o604
    DOI: 10.1111/dpr.12309
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/dpr.12309
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/dpr.12309?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. Anne T. Kuriakose & Rasmus Heltberg & William Wiseman & Cecilia Costella & Rachel Cipryk & Sabine Cornelius, 2013. "Climate-Responsive Social Protection," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 31, pages 19-34, November.
    2. Ian MacAuslan & Nils Riemenschneider, 2011. "Richer but Resented: What do Cash Transfers do to Social Relations?," IDS Bulletin, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(6), pages 60-66, November.
    3. Mark Davies & Christophe Béné & Alexander Arnall & Thomas Tanner & Andrew Newsham & Cristina Coirolo, 2013. "Promoting Resilient Livelihoods through Adaptive Social Protection: Lessons from 124 programmes in South Asia," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 31(1), pages 27-58, January.
    4. Clément Imbert & John Papp, 2015. "Labor Market Effects of Social Programs: Evidence from India's Employment Guarantee," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 233-63, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Khosla, Sunil & Jena, Pradyot Ranjan & Rahut, Dil Bahadur, 2023. "Can rural livelihood programs enhance capabilities and reduce vulnerability to poverty? Evidence from a tribal region of eastern India," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 85-98.
    2. Rao, Smitha & Enelamah, Ngozi V., 2024. "Social protection and absorptive capacity: Disaster preparedness and social welfare policy in the United States," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    3. Aleksandrova, Mariya, 2019. "Social protection as a tool to address slow onset climate events: Emerging issues for research and policy," IDOS Discussion Papers 16/2019, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).

    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. Aleksandrova, Mariya, 2019. "Social protection as a tool to address slow onset climate events: Emerging issues for research and policy," IDOS Discussion Papers 16/2019, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    2. Drèze, Jean & Khera, Reetika, 2017. "Recent Social Security Initiatives in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 555-572.
    3. Deepta Chopra, 2015. "Political commitment in India’s social policy implementation: Shaping the performance of MGNREGA," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-050-15, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    4. Christophe Béné & Alex Cornelius & Fanny Howland, 2018. "Bridging Humanitarian Responses and Long-Term Development through Transformative Changes—Some Initial Reflections from the World Bank’s Adaptive Social Protection Program in the Sahel," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-17, May.
    5. Das, Ritanjan & Dey, Subhasish & Neogi, Ranjita, 2021. "Across the stolen Ponds: The political geography of social welfare in rural eastern India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    6. Sheahan, Megan & Liu, Yanyan & Narayanan, Sudha & Barrett, Christopher B., 2015. "Disaggregated labor supply implications of guaranteed employment in India," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 237345, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    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. Das, Upasak & Maiorano, Diego, 2019. "Post-clientelistic initiatives in a patronage democracy: The distributive politics of India’s MGNREGA," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 239-252.
    9. Scognamillo, Antonio & Sitko, Nicholas J., 2021. "Leveraging social protection to advance climate-smart agriculture: An empirical analysis of the impacts of Malawi’s Social Action Fund (MASAF) on farmers’ adoption decisions and welfare outcomes," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    10. Ravallion, Martin, 2019. "Guaranteed employment or guaranteed income?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 209-221.
    11. Hare Krisna Kundo & Martin Brueckner & Rochelle Spencer & John Davis, 2021. "Mainstreaming climate adaptation into social protection: The issues yet to be addressed," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(6), pages 953-974, August.
    12. Megan Sheahan & Yanyan Liu & Christopher B. Barrett & Sudha Narayanan, 2014. "The Political Economy of MGNREGS Spending in Andhra Pradesh," Working Papers id:6021, eSocialSciences.
    13. Deininger, Klaus & Nagarajan, Hari K & Singh, Sudhir K, 2020. "Women's political leadership and economic empowerment: Evidence from public works in India," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 277-291.
    14. Fisher, Eleanor & Attah, Ramlatu & Barca, Valentina & O'Brien, Clare & Brook, Simon & Holland, Jeremy & Kardan, Andrew & Pavanello, Sara & Pozarny, Pamela, 2017. "The Livelihood Impacts of Cash Transfers in Sub-Saharan Africa: Beneficiary Perspectives from Six Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 299-319.
    15. Mushtaq Ahmad Malla, 2020. "MGNREGA in Kashmir: An Analysis of Labour Market Outcomes and Livelihood Security," Indian Journal of Human Development, , vol. 14(3), pages 424-446, December.
    16. Akerkar, Supriya & Joshi, P.C. & Fordham, Maureen, 2016. "Cultures of Entitlement and Social Protection: Evidence from Flood Prone Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh, India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 46-58.
    17. Ana Maria Loboguerrero & Bruce M. Campbell & Peter J. M. Cooper & James W. Hansen & Todd Rosenstock & Eva Wollenberg, 2019. "Food and Earth Systems: Priorities for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation for Agriculture and Food Systems," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-26, March.
    18. Rao, Smitha & Enelamah, Ngozi V., 2024. "Social protection and absorptive capacity: Disaster preparedness and social welfare policy in the United States," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    19. Warren Dodd & Sara Wyngaarden & Sally Humphries & Kirit Patel & Shannon Majowicz & Matthew Little & Cate Dewey, 2018. "The Relationship Between MGNREGA and Internal Labour Migration in Tamil Nadu, India," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 30(2), pages 178-194, April.
    20. World Bank Group, 2015. "India Development Update, April 2015," World Bank Publications - Reports 21872, The World Bank Group.

    More about this item

    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:bla:devpol:v:36:y:2018:i:s1:p:o586-o604. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/odioruk.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.