IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sch/wpaper/395.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is decentralisation promoting or hindering the effective implementation of MGNREGS?: The evidence from Karnataka

Author

Listed:
  • D Rajasekhar
  • Salim Lakha
  • R Manjula

    (Institute for Social and Economic Change)

Abstract

Decentralisation is viewed by some as an effective means of improving governance and equitable spread of development benefits. This paper examines the process of distribution of social protection benefits through decentralised governance by looking at the implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in Karnataka, which is ranked high on the devolution index. But, the implementation of MGNREGS under decentralised governance has produced lacklustre results and uneven benefits. Powerful social actors at the local level have devised careful modus operandi to dilute transparency mechanisms and stifle voices from below to subvert the scheme to suit their interests.

Suggested Citation

  • D Rajasekhar & Salim Lakha & R Manjula, 2017. "Is decentralisation promoting or hindering the effective implementation of MGNREGS?: The evidence from Karnataka," Working Papers 395, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.
    • Handle: RePEc:sch:wpaper:395
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.isec.ac.in/WP%20395%20-%20%20D%20Rajasekhar%20et%20al%20-%20Final.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Crook,Richard C. & Manor,James, 1998. "Democracy and Decentralisation in South Asia and West Africa," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521636476, October.
    2. Pranab Bardhan, 2002. "Decentralization of Governance and Development," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(4), pages 185-205, Fall.
    3. Khera, Reetika (ed.), 2011. "The Battle for Employment Guarantee," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198070627.
    4. Crook,Richard C. & Manor,James, 1998. "Democracy and Decentralisation in South Asia and West Africa," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521631570, 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. Mogues, Tewodaj & Benin, Samuel, 2012. "Do External Grants to District Governments Discourage Own Revenue Generation? A Look at Local Public Finance Dynamics in Ghana," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(5), pages 1054-1067.
    2. Heller, Patrick & Harilal, K.N. & Chaudhuri, Shubham, 2007. "Building Local Democracy: Evaluating the Impact of Decentralization in Kerala, India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 626-648, April.
    3. Zelda Brutti, 2016. "Cities drifting apart: Heterogeneous outcomes of decentralizing public education," Working Papers 2016/26, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    4. Bardhan, Pranab & Mookherjee, Dilip, 2006. "Pro-poor targeting and accountability of local governments in West Bengal," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 303-327, April.
    5. Brutti Zelda, 2020. "Cities drifting apart: Heterogeneous outcomes of decentralizing public education," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 9(1), pages 1-38, January.
    6. Costanza, Jennifer Noel, 2016. "Mining Conflict and the Politics of Obtaining a Social License: Insight from Guatemala," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 97-113.
    7. Herrera, Veronica & Post, Alison E., 2014. "Can Developing Countries Both Decentralize and Depoliticize Urban Water Services? Evaluating the Legacy of the 1990s Reform Wave," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 621-641.
    8. Lavanya Suresh, 2014. "Governing the Resource: A Study of the Institutions of Decentralized Forest Resource Management," Studies in Indian Politics, , vol. 2(1), pages 21-41, June.
    9. Berenschot, Ward & Mulder, Peter, 2019. "Explaining regional variation in local governance: Clientelism and state-dependency in Indonesia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 233-244.
    10. Julia Brown, 2014. "Evaluating Participatory Initiatives in South Africa," SAGE Open, , vol. 4(2), pages 21582440145, April.
    11. Frimpong Boamah, Emmanuel, 2018. "Constitutional economics of Ghana’s decentralization," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 256-267.
    12. Veron, Rene & Williams, Glyn & Corbridge, Stuart & Srivastava, Manoj, 2006. "Decentralized Corruption or Corrupt Decentralization? Community Monitoring of Poverty-Alleviation Schemes in Eastern India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(11), pages 1922-1941, November.
    13. Andrew Wardell, D. & Lund, Christian, 2006. "Governing Access to Forests in Northern Ghana: Micro-Politics and the Rents of Non-Enforcement," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(11), pages 1887-1906, November.
    14. Bidhan Kanti Das, 2019. "Denial of Rights Continues: How Legislation for ‘Democratic Decentralisation’ of Forest Governance was Subverted in the Implementation Process of the Forest Rights Act in India," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 31(4), pages 957-983, September.
    15. Fischer, Harry W. & Ali, Syed Shoaib, 2019. "Reshaping the public domain: Decentralization, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), and trajectories of local democracy in rural India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 147-158.
    16. Christa N. Brunnschweiler & Samuel Kwabena Obeng, 2020. "Rewarding Allegiance: Political Alignment and Fiscal Outcomes in Local Government," University of East Anglia School of Economics Working Paper Series 2020-05, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    17. Narayana, D., 2005. "Institutional change and its impact on the poor and excluded : the Indian decentralisation experience," ILO Working Papers 993769263402676, International Labour Organization.
    18. Binswanger, Hans P., 2006. "Leonard K. Elmhirst Lecture: Empowering Rural People for Their Own Development," 2006 Annual Meeting, August 12-18, 2006, Queensland, Australia 25713, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    19. Cook, Nathan J. & Wright, Glenn D. & Andersson, Krister P., 2017. "Local Politics of Forest Governance: Why NGO Support Can Reduce Local Government Responsiveness," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 203-214.
    20. Service Opare, 2011. "Sustaining water supply through a phased community management approach: lessons from Ghana’s “oats” water supply scheme," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 13(6), pages 1021-1042, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Decentralisation;

    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:sch:wpaper:395. 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: B B Chand (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iseccin.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.