Participation of Women in MGNREGA: how Far is it Successful in Morigaon, Assam?

Progress of a nation is greatly shaped by the status of involvement of women along with their counterpart. Examples of highly developed countries show a gender-wise balanced use of human capital has a significant relation with the level of development. This paper tries to examine the level of participation of women in the much popular Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) activities vis a vis their male counterpart where special provisions are kept for the increased participation of women. It is done with the help of primary survey carried out in Morigaon District of Assam. By using tabular method to compare level of participation of women across communities vis a vis men, we also examined various socio-economic attributes that reflects the primary factors responsible for such gender-wise variation. Also, Probit analysis is followed to find out the role of gender along with other factors in the participation level. The result suggests that participation of women in physical activities and decision making is far from satisfactory except from backward communities who are more involved in physical work. Though education, primary occupation and age have inverse impact on participation in physical activities, education, distance from the panchayat centre has inverse impact on participation in decision making.