Comparative study of MNREGA performance in Raichur and Mahbubnagar districts

Abstract

More than 50% of India's total work force is engaged in agriculture and allied activities. Agriculture in India is majorly dependent on monsoons which provide employment in seasons like Kharif and Rabi. This leaves the work force unemployed for rest of the seasons. Due to lack of perennial flow of income, people tend to migrate from rural areas to urban areas in search of employment. This creates socio economic imbalances in various parts of our country. To arrest these ill effects and to provide employment in and around their place of origin, Government of India has introduced National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) in 2005.The objective of NREGA is to provide at least one hundred days of guaranteed wage employment in every financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. After five years of NREGA implementation across 625 districts in three phases, our preliminary study depicts disparity in its execution in various districts. We have chosen Raichur district in Karnataka for our study as Raichur was one of the few selected districts in which NREGA was implemented in the first phase despite of Act being implemented first it has not been able to achieve the objectives of Act successfully while it's neighboring district Mahbubnagar in Andhra Pradesh has been relatively successful in implementation in terms of providing 100 days of work to households. Mahbubnagar has cumulatively provided 30 House Holds (HHs) 100 days of work in compare to 0 in Raichur since its start in 2006iii. Hence we would like to have an in-depth study on NREGA's implementation in Raichur, Karnataka particularly in Raichur district.