Rural Upliftment and World's Largest Welfare Scheme Mgnarega : A Sociological Learning of Southern Rajasthan in India

Despite the preeminent efforts during the different  Indian plan periods, the state of affairs of rural masses do not change significantly and the primary goals such as an increase in productivity,  employment, eradication of poverty and social-cultural transformation of society remained an illusion for several years. Therefore in order to achieve the twin goals of rural development and employment, the government of India was promulgated the world’s biggest welfare program entitled as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) on December 7, 2005. It aims at enhancing livelihood and security of homes in rural areas of the country by providing 100 days’ guaranteed wages in each financial year. The NREGA became operational on 2^ndFebruary 2006 and initially covered 200 most backward districts. In the second stage this scheme was further expanded in 330 backward districts and finally it made available for all the districts of the country.

As far as the impact of MGNREGA in Rajasthan is concerned it has helped the poor and needy in the villages of Rajasthan in several ways. Aside from offering jobs to the rural needy, it has been assisted in the creation of durable rural assets like plantations over degraded forest land, pasture land development, cleansing of ponds, improving the water harvesting system creation of gravel roads etc. It has helped in deepening the grass roots participatory democracy by making the system more transparent and accountable at every step.  The scheme has also assisted in controlling the migration of poor villagers towards cities and towns in search of employment. 

 In this context, the present paper is an attempt to assess the effectiveness of implementations of MGNREGA in southern Rajasthan comprising of Bhilwara, Chittaurgarh, Partapgarh, Udaipur, Dungarpur and Banswara districts. These districts of Rajasthan are most backward and extensively populated by scheduled tribes.