Performance of MGNREGA in Assam- A Comparative Analysis

India is rural based nation faced by many socio-economic problems which have been tried by the government to solve with different methods and techniques. Unemployment is one of the crucial rural problems of India. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA 2005), presently known as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is one of such policies implemented by the Government of India under Ministry of Rural Development. This policy has targeted to provide hundred days of guaranteed wage in every financial year to every household. The adult unemployed members of the family will be engaged in unskilled manual work and if fails to do so, the government will provide hundred days’ wages to that person. The Act also mandates 33 per cent participation for women in MGNREGA work programmes. In Assam, all 27 districts were brought under the Act in three phases during the period from 2nd February, 2006 to 1st April, 2008. In Assam around 7.94 Lakhs employment are provided to households with a total of 131.55 lakh Person days till date. In this article, an attempt is made to justify and review the implementation of MGNREGA in Assam in comparison to national average. Besides this, this study tries to evaluate the nature of women participation as per the scheme. Secondary data, published and unpublished reports and journals have been taken into account for the study. The findings of the study revealed that the programme has brought a change in the socio-economic conditions of the beneficiaries in some other states of India. But in case of Assam, it becomes clear from the experiments that the scheme is not properly implemented in practical field. A huge gap between policy taken and implementation is found in Government’s level and implementation in grass root level of the policy.