Employment and Poverty trends under MGNREGA

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), enacted by the Government of India in 2005, is perhaps the most ambitious anti-poverty scheme launched anywhere in the world. The programme’s efficacy is based on the logic of using the productive capacity of unskilled rural workers to build and nurture productive and infrastructural assets, with the aim to alleviate the problem of chronic unemployment and poverty by providing employment to them in their villages. MGNREGA is a rights based programme, which guarantees 100 days of employment to poor household in rural areas.