Socio-economic Impacts Ofmgnrega on Rural Population in India

The NREGA addresses itself chiefly to working people and their fundamental right to live with dignity. The success of the NREGA, however, will depend on people's realization of the Act as a right. The issues involved in empowering workers are in the range of enhancement of knowledge levels, development of literacy skills and organizing workers. Enhancing social security levels of workers also needs to be considered. Another important task is to link NREGA with other developmental programmes. Empowerment of workers and creation of durable assets depend, in terms of their strategies, to a great extent on the linkages between NREGA and other development programmes. Linkages with human development programmes such as the National Rural Health Mission and the National Literacy Mission are needed to ensure basic human entitlements to workers that in turn will enhance their capacity to negotiate their rights under the Act. Linkages with other livelihood and infrastructure initiatives need to be considered for sustainable employment. The thrust of NREGA is on strengthening the natural resource base of livelihood. Initiatives for natural resource management also need to be dovetailed with income generation projects to enable workers to move from wage employment to self-sustaining employment. In addition to this, there is a need to improve the technological options for performances and monitoring.