IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/soudev/v11y2016i2p175-202.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Demand Shortfalls or Supply-side Constraints

Author

Listed:
  • Deepta Chopra

Abstract

This article presents a political economy explanation for the dramatic decline in performance of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), India’s largest social welfare policy, in one of its highest performing states, Rajasthan. The sharp decline from 2009 to 2010 is shown to be counter-intuitive, given the active civil society engagement right from the early stages of the Act’s making and implementation. Using information from field visits, interviews and secondary literature, I unpack the reasons for this decline, evaluating the validity of demand-side shortfalls and supply-side constraints as explanations. I demonstrate that it is primarily low capacity and low motivation of state officials that have led to the drop in MGNREGA’s performance. Further, I argue that the biggest strengths of the MGNREGA, that is, demand-based nature and provisions around transparency, have been made its most pressing shortcomings. Given the political nature of implementation of the MGNREGA, I conclude that Rajasthan needs political engagement strategies rather than merely technocratic solutions if this downturn is to be arrested.

Suggested Citation

  • Deepta Chopra, 2016. "Demand Shortfalls or Supply-side Constraints," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 11(2), pages 175-202, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:soudev:v:11:y:2016:i:2:p:175-202
    DOI: 10.1177/0973174116649146
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0973174116649146
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0973174116649146?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. D. Narasimha Reddy & Rukmini Tankha & C. Upendranadh & Alakh N. Sharma, 2010. "National Rural Employment Guarantee as Social Protection," IDS Bulletin, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(4), pages 63-76, July.
    2. Afridi, Farzana & Iversen, Vegard, 2014. "Social Audits and MGNREGA Delivery: Lessons from Andhra Pradesh," India Policy Forum, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 10(1), pages 297-341.
    3. repec:nca:ncaerj:v:10:y:2014:i:1:p:297-341 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. 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.
    5. Indrajit Roy, 2015. "Class politics and social protection: the implementation of India’s MGNREGA," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-046-15, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    6. Heather Plumridge Bedi & Louise Tillin, 2015. "Inter-state Competition, Land Conflicts and Resistance in India," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(2), pages 194-211, June.
    7. Kala Seetharam Sridhar & Guanghua Wan (ed.), 2014. "Urbanization in Asia," Springer Books, Springer, edition 127, number 978-81-322-1638-4, March.
    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. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Afridi, Farzana & Dhillon, Amrita & Roy Chaudhuri, Arka & Saattvic,, 2022. "Measuring performance: Ranking state success over two decades in India," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    5. 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.
    6. Smriti Rao & Smita Ramnarain, 2023. "Gender, Social Protection, and Crises of Social Reproduction: Contextualizing NREGA," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 55(1), pages 70-92, March.
    7. Sofia Amaral & Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay & Rudra Sensarma, 2015. "Public Work Programs and Gender-based Violence: The Case of NREGA in India," Discussion Papers 15-09, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    8. Rhonda Breitkreuz & Carley‐Jane Stanton & Nurmaiya Brady & John Pattison‐Williams & E.D. King & Chudhury Mishra & Brent Swallow, 2017. "The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme: A Policy Solution to Rural Poverty in India?," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 35(3), pages 397-417, May.
    9. Kartik Misra, 2019. "Accumulation by Dispossession and Electoral Democracies : An Analysis of Land Acquisition for Special Economic Zones in India," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2019-16, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    10. Xuefei Ren, 2017. "Land acquisition, rural protests, and the local state in China and India," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 35(1), pages 25-41, February.
    11. 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.
    12. Loraine Kennedy, 2017. "State restructuring and emerging patterns of subnational policy-making and governance in China and India," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 35(1), pages 6-24, February.
    13. Kyando, Doreen Nico, 2022. "Social accountability initiatives in the delivery of public services in Sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic literature review," IOB Discussion Papers 2022.03, Universiteit Antwerpen, Institute of Development Policy (IOB).
    14. Kala Seetharam Sridhar & A.Venugopala Reddy, 2014. "Contribution of the urban poor: evidence from Chennai, India," Asia-Pacific Development Journal, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), vol. 21(2), pages 53-76, December.
    15. Deininger, Klaus & Liu, Yanyan, 2019. "Heterogeneous welfare impacts of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme: Evidence from Andhra Pradesh, India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 98-111.
    16. Drèze, Jean & Khera, Reetika, 2017. "Recent Social Security Initiatives in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 555-572.
    17. 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).
    18. Afridi, Farzana & Bhattacharya, Sourav & Dhillon, Amrita & Solan, Eilon, 2024. "Electoral competition, electoral uncertainty and corruption: Theory and evidence from India," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).
    19. Meena Yadav & Shiv Prasad Yadav, 2022. "Performance efficiency measurement of MGNREGA 2018-19 in Indian States and Union Territories based on DEA," International Journal of System Assurance Engineering and Management, Springer;The Society for Reliability, Engineering Quality and Operations Management (SREQOM),India, and Division of Operation and Maintenance, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden, vol. 13(4), pages 1714-1721, August.
    20. Chari, A.V. & Glick, Peter & Okeke, Edward & Srinivasan, Sinduja V., 2019. "Workfare and infant health: Evidence from India's public works program," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 116-134.

    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:sae:soudev:v:11:y:2016:i:2:p:175-202. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.