Somasekhar

¾ At the village level, the Gram Panchayat is the main implementating agency

as per the recommendations of the Gram Sabha.

¾ Special meeting of Gram Sabha is to be held to invite application for

registration. Each person wanting employment is expected to get registered

with the Gram Panchayat and get a “job card and employment will be

provided to those only.

¾ As far as funds are concerned, the Maharashtra model of setting up of a

separate fund will be followed. The National Employment Guarantee fund at

the Centre and state level will be created.

Permissible works

¾ Works relating to minor irrigation, water conservation, drought proofing, de-

silting of tanks, flood control, land development and rural roads.

¾ Any other work, which may be notified by the Central Governement in

consultation with the State Government.

MGNREGS – Reduction of rural poverty

The major objective of MGNREGS is to enhance employment opportunities and

increase wage rates to provide livelihood security for the poor, vulnerable and

marginalized leading to reduction of poverty in rural areas. Under the MGNREGS

nearly 5.50 crore families or nearly one in four rural households, were provided

over 250 core person-days of work. It has provided around ` 1,10,700 crore 66%

of the Total expenditure of around ` 1,66,000 core as worker wayges from 2006

upto 2011-12 financial year. Several studies indicated that there is a positive

impact of this programme on household income, monthly per capita expenditure,

food security and health of the beneficiaries. NREGS contributed a lot in reduction

of poverty. The details regarding impact of NREGS are given in following tables.

From the Table-2, it is seen that there has been steadily increasing in providing

employment to households since its launching of the programme ie 2006-07 to

upto 2011-12. During the year 2006-07, 2.1 crore households were provided

employment in the 200 districts where the programme implemented in first phase,

later during the year 2007-08 3.4 crore households were benefited in 330 districts.

In 2008-09 from where in all rural districts in the country were covered 4.5 crore

households were, provided employment. Subsequently in the rest of two financial

years also around 5.5 crore households were provided employment. Thus, after

implementation of MGNREGS one-fourth of rural households were provided

employment by increasing the number of households year after year.

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