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

Sripad Atri, Sansiddho Maity, Aditya Namburi, Arun Sateesh, Pratik Gore and Varun Miglani

Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2021, vol. Volume 76, issue Number 3

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.

Keywords: Labor; and; Human; Capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/345169/files/E ... %20in%20COVID-19.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:inijae:345169

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.345169

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics from Indian Society of Agricultural Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().