Sonalde Desai advocates for reforming India’s MGNREGA program
India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is a program that has been in place for 10 years, designed to provide 100 days of paid work to any rural household that demands it. Using data from the India Human Development Surveys (IHDS), faculty associate Sonalde Desai was able to show that for households participating in the program, income from MGNREGA represents 8.6% of their total household income. Without this small but critical support, she estimates that the poverty ratio would be 25% higher among participating households.
The potential for program driven poverty reduction is therefore significant, but this impact is hampered by ineffective program implementation, wherein 70 percent of rural households do not participate in the program, and there is considerable regional inequality in the availability of promised work. Dr. Desai advocates for adjusting program design to increase rural outreach and work availability, instead of shifting focus to other programs for poverty alleviation, including those based on cash transfers.