Determinants of Rural Poor Participation in MahatmaGandhi National Rural Employment GuaranteeProgramme (MGNREGP) In India

Economic development and issues relating to it are important for both rich and poorcountries of the world. While maintaining development is a matter of concern for the richcountries, accelerating the pace of development is indeed more pressing for the poorcountries to ensure growth and justice. However, poor countries are plagued by skeweddistribution and underutilisation of resources leading to poverty, illiteracy, unemployment,low consumption, low investment and the like. Development economists have oftencautioned that unless poverty is eradicated, growth potential of an economy cannot beharnessed justifiably. The key to the redistribution of resources lies in the creation ofemployment opportunities for the poor. Employment induced growth is hailed as ademand driven approach to full employment. It can be firmly argued that massemployment programmes have the ability to enhance demand and get the economy out ofthe shackles of recession. MGNREGP is considered a timely intervention in this direction.A legally-binding rights-based programme of this kind is expected to bring about a turnaround in the rural economy by eradicating all social malice. MGNREGP can improvesustainable rural livelihoods through spill over effects thereby enabling the poor managetheir risks and opportunities effectively. There is no denying of the importance of policyand programme actions for employment generation to ensure food security amongst poorthan direct food subsidy strategies (Von Braun, 1995). The present study is an attempt toidentify the factors that motivate rural poor participation in MGNREGP on the basis ofprimary data collected from Balasore and Mayurbhanj districts of Odisha state of India.By using a logistic regression model it is found that the size of per capita land holding,off-farm opportunities, annual income and political affiliation are negative predictorswhereas awareness, age of the household head, SC, OBC and household size are positivepredictors of participation in MGNREGP in both the districts. While education, ST andBPL card holding are found to have positive influence in Mayurbhanj, they have oppositeinfluence in Balasore. Lastly, the sex of household head in Mayurbhanj is negativelyrelated but that in Balasore positively related to participation in MGNREGP. The programhas positive impact on the standard of living of the participants in less developed areas.Though the results are often contrary to our expectation, it may be construed that theMGNREG program has contributed to improvement in the standard of living of the peopleespecially in rural areas. However, it is disheartening to note that the implementation of the programme is not completely flawless. It is found that both the non-poor and localpoliticians have a clutch over the program. Our findings reveal that aged people participatein the program and the trend of migration has not yet been checked significantly. Femaleworkers do not get proper representation. For active participation of the really needypeople in the programme, it is suggested to create massive awareness among the peopleparticularly among women through different sensitised programmes in rural areas. Bettertargeting the program shall also help to involve the real poor rather than non-poor.Provision of work for more than 100 days, increase in the wage rate, payment throughbank account and introduction of bio-metric machines may help to prevent corruption andencourage the real stakeholders to reap benefits of the programme.