National Rural Employment Guarantee: issues, concerns and prospects
NREGS is a massive rights-based social protection programme of the country. It evolved tremendously over the past five years, demonstrating the relevance in as well impact on the rural landscape. In spite of being a nationally designed programme, it demonstrated varying performance across states, and several local innovations, improvisations, and adjustments can be seen at the field level. This paper brings out an analysis of its performance in terms of meeting the risks and vulnerabilities of identified sections and identifies issues and concerns that stem from the field. Analysis is based on secondary data sources as well as field studies conducted by various agencies across the country. The paper identifies the fast-evolving ground scenario of implementation as well as some specific initial conditions that determined the trajectory of progress across states in its implementation.