National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005

National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (or, NREGA No 42, later renamed as the "Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act", MGNREGA), is an Indian labour law and social security measure that aims to guarantee the 'right to work'.

It aims to enhance livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.

The act was first proposed in 1991 by P.V. Narasimha Rao. In 2006, it was finally accepted in the parliament and commenced implementation in 625 districts of India. Based on this pilot experience, NREGA was scoped up to covered all the districts of India from 1 April 2008.[4] The statute is hailed by the government as "the largest and most ambitious social security and public works programme in the world". In its World Development Report 2014, the World Bank termed it a "stellar example of rural development".

The MGNREGA was initiated with the objective of "enhancing livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year, to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work".[7] Another aim of MGNREGA is to create durable assets (such as roads, canals, ponds and wells). Employment is to be provided within 5 km of an applicant's residence, and minimum wages are to be paid. If work is not provided within 15 days of applying, applicants are entitled to an unemployment allowance. Thus, employment under MGNREGA is a legal entitlement.

MGNREGA is to be implemented mainly by gram panchayats (GPs). The involvement of contractors is banned. Labour-intensive tasks like creating infrastructure for water harvesting, drought relief and flood control are preferred.[citation needed]

Apart from providing economic security and creating rural assets, NREGA can help in protecting the environment, empowering rural women, reducing rural-urban migration and fostering social equity, among others."

The law provides many safeguards to promote its effective management and implementation. The act explicitly mentions the principles and agencies for implementation, list of allowed works, financing pattern, monitoring and evaluation, and most importantly the detailed measures to ensure transparency and accountability

History

From 1960, the first 30 years of experimentation with employment schemes in rural areas taught few important lessons to the government like the ‘Rural Manpower Programme’ taught the lesson of financial management, the ‘Crash Scheme for Rural Employment’ of planning for outcomes, a ‘Pilot Intensive Rural Employment Programme’ of labour-intensive works, the ‘Drought Prone Area Programme’ of integrated rural development, ‘Marginal Farmers and Agricultural Labourers Scheme’ of rural economic development, the ‘Food for Work Programme’ (FWP) of holistic development and better coordination with the states, the ‘National Rural Employment Programme’ (NREP) of community development, and the ‘Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme’ of focus on landless households. The Planning Commission later approved the scheme and the same was adopted on national scale.

On 1 April 1989, to converge employment generation, infrastructure development and food security in rural areas, the government integrated NREP and RLEGP[n 1]into a new scheme JRY. The most significant change was the decentralization of implementation by involving local people through PRIs and hence a decreasing role of bureaucracy.

On 2 October 1993, the Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS) was initiated by the then prime minister P.V.Narasimha Rao to provide employment to agricultural hands during the lean agricultural season. Rao had started discussions on this act in 1991.[13] The role of PRIs was reinforced with the local self-government at the district level called the ‘Zilla Parishad’ as the main implementing authority. Later, EAS was merged with SGRY in 2001.

On 1 April 1999, the JRY was revamped and renamed to JGSY with a similar objective. The role of PRIs was further reinforced with the local self-government at the village level called the ‘Village Panchayats’ as the sole implementing authority. In 2001, it was merged with SGRY.

In January 2001, the government introduced FWP(Food for Work Programme) similar to the one initiated in 1977. Once NREGA was enacted, the two were merged in 2006.

On 25 September 2001 to converge employment generation, infrastructure development and food security in rural areas, the government integrated EAS and JGSY into a new scheme SGRY. The role of PRIs was retained with the ‘Village Panchayats’ as the sole implementing authority.Yet again due to implementation issues, it was merged with Mahatma Gandhi NREGA in 2006.

The total government allocation to these precursors of Mahatma Gandhi NREGA had been about three-quarters of ₹1 trillion (US$15 billion)