changes that occurred in the life of workers after the introduction of NREGA 2005 ?
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Despite high rates of economic growth in India since the 1990s, rural poverty continues to be a policy concern. Over two thirds of India's population inhabit rural areas, accounting for 75% of all impoverished citizens in India (IFAD, 2015). Currently, nearly 30% of rural Indians live below the poverty line (Suneja, 2015; IFAD, 2015). Risks for rural poverty include caste, employment status, gender and land ownership (IFAD, 2015). Rural poverty is particularly concentrated among Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST). To illustrate, although SCs make up approximately 22% of the population and STs make up 11% of the population, these groups account for 80% of the rural poor (IFAD, 2015; Raghu et al., 2013). Furthermore, women are over-represented in rural poverty, holding a disproportionate number of the marginal agricultural jobs with low wages in rural India (IFAD, 2015). Notably, even with substantial agricultural growth, there have been economic declines for marginal farmers and landless rural citizens (Vakulabharanam, 2005).
Recognizing these problems, the Government of India has introduced several nationwide centralized social schemes to address poverty.1 One such scheme is The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (hereafter referred to as MGNREGA), offering a unique rights-based guarantee of employment to reduce income and food insecurity in rural areas. Significant investment has been made in this scheme, amounting to 5.3 billion dollars (Ministry of Rural Development, 2013–14), or 0.3% of the gross domestic product. Given the size of this policy platform, the substantial amount of public money invested in it and the potential impact on rural citizens, it is important to ascertain the extent to which MGNREGA has reached its stated policy goals. This article sets out to do this through assessing the extent to which this scheme has been able to provide rights-based social protection through guaranteed employment for marginalized groups, particularly SC, ST and women. In addition, we ask a theoretical question: will this policy achieve meaningful poverty reduction for marginalized citizens in India?
Using a qualitative research design in three case study areas, we endeavour to answer these questions through findings from a study that involved two key data collection phases. First, we reviewed MGNREGA policy documents to understand the key goals of the policies. We then went to the case study sites and conducted 19 focus groups with 219 policy implementers and end users in three rural sites in three states – Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Odisha – to gauge the extent to which these goals were realized in our study sites. Study sites were chosen because they were rich in agrobiodiversity, but also had high rates of poverty, between 60% and 85% (Breitkreuz et al., 2014)2 .
Our analysis contributes to the literature on MGNREGA in a unique way. It provides evidence from an in-depth qualitative study that offers insight into policies from the perspectives and experiences of local people in local sites (an emic perspective), in the spirit of a critical ethnographic tradition that assumes that the best way of knowing is to know from within (Smith, 1987). This article will add to the literature about MGNREGA that to date consists primarily of aggregate national, state level or multi-state evaluations (Deininger and Liu, 2013; Dreze and Khera, 2009; Dreze, 2010; Reddy et al., 2010; Azam, 2012; Imbert and Papp, 2015), or studies that focus on single, or a few, factors such as the relationship between MGREGA and stunting (Dasgupta, 2013) and malnutrition (Nair et al., 2013). As an alternative, we offer an analysis from an in-depth, qualitative case study of three research sites in the states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Odisha. Our contribution does not claim to isolate particular factors or indicators of success. Rather, we provide evidence from the ‘subjective voice’ of end users of the policy (that is, community people in rural sites) as well as local officials who provided insights into the local contexts and ways that policies are implemented in these areas. Pani and Iyer (2012: 14) indicate that ‘local processes are typically better captured through detailed qualitative analysis’ and that is what we endeavour to do here. This study thus adds to emerging literature on micro-level analysis of multiple dimensions (Novotný et al., 2013). Using this approach enables the researcher to discover new, as yet unconsidered, elements of a particular policy intervention that might get overlooked in other macro-level approaches. Although the findings are not generalizable across the whole of India, or the whole of each state in which the study was conducted, we posit that the insights gained from this approach will enhance understanding of some aspects of the MGNREGA policy that may not be evident through other macro-level approaches.