By Suman Bery, D B Gupta, Reeta Krishna, and Siddhartha Mitra
By Suman Bery, D B Gupta, Reeta Krishna, and Siddhartha Mitra
By Suman Bery, D B Gupta, Reeta Krishna, and Siddhartha Mitra
ABSTRACT
This paper attempts to study the impact of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme in three Grama
Panchayats of Kasaragod District,namely Madikai, Ajanoor and Trikarpur. It also looks into the organizational
arrangements for planning and implementation of the scheme. Various institutional aspects in the form of
Guidelines, Rules and Regulations brought out by the Government of Kerala have also been examined. The
identification of projects for NREGA is a grass root level activity with Ward Development Committee and Area
Development Society of Kudumbasree playing a pivotal role. The role of Grama Sabha in the formulation of a ward
level Action Plan is found to be weak. The worker registration is appreciably good in all the three Grama
Panchayats. Registration of SC and ST categories also is impressive. But there is a big drop in the number of people
who demanded jobs in 2007- 08. It is below one fourth in two Panchayats and just above one third in the third
Panchayat. There is a further drop in the number in the succeeding year. The rosy part is that all those who
demanded jobs have been provided with jobs. The percentage of man-days generated for SC and ST categories is
very low compared to that of the general category. Women of the general category constituted the major
beneficiaries of NREGA. Unskilled wages constituted the major component of expenditure. The number of projects
is large, most of them not leading to creation of public durable assets. There is lack of integration with other
schemes implemented at local level. The scheme is successful in raising the level of employment and income of the
rural household, there by enhancing their purchasing power. Working in groups has empowered the women socially.
In some cases NREGA works and agricultural works were operational at the same time aggravating the problem of
labour shortage in agriculture. The study recommends a few changes in the existing operational system to make the
programme more effective.
Key words: Kasaragod, Kudumbasree, NREGA, women empowerment.
JEL Classification: E24, J38
characteristics of Good Governance and to explore the relationship between good governance
and employment generation through NREGA, the present paper makes a case study of GPs of
Paschim Medinipur (West Midnapore) district of West Bengal. Data regarding different
parameters, related to core characteristics of good governance reveal that the core components
of good governance has significant positive impact on creating average persondays per
household under NREGS in GP.
Key Words: NREGA, Good Governance, Gram Panchayat