Paper short abstract:

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is India’s largest and best resourced social welfare programme. In the tenth anniversary of its implementation, we evaluate the success of the NREGA in achieving its broader development objectives.

Paper long abstract:

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is India’s largest and best resourced social welfare programme (with a budget of 8.91 billion USD or 1.3 per cent of total central government spending), and the world’s largest social security intervention in terms of household coverage. In the tenth anniversary of its implementation, we evaluate the success of the NREGA by asking three questions about the efficacy of the NREGA as a flagship social protection programme of the Indian government: a) how has the NREGA achieved its broader development objectives?, b) why has implementation of the NREGA been a challenge, and what have been the determinants of successful (and unsuccessful) implementation? c) what have been the implications of weak implementation of the NREGA (wherever it has occurred) for the broader development objectives of the Act? We conclude that the NREGA has radically transformed the manner that poor rural households view their rights as citizens, as well as been a critical source of livelihoods for many of the poorest households at times when no work was available in private rural labour markets. However, the NREGA has not been a complete success due to poor implementation, and we attribute this to weak state capacity and wavering political commitment to the programme.