The Social Safety Nets Team of the Social Protection and Labor Sector (HDNSP) and the South Asia Social Protection Team is pleased to sponsor a presentation by:
Martin Ravallion (DECRG)
Chair: Pablo Gottret (SASSP)
India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) stipulates up to 100 days of work to any household who wants it, at wage rates set around the levels of the statutory minimum wage rates for agricultural labor. If the scheme worked in practice the way it is designed it would undoubtedly have a huge impact on poverty in India. But how does it work in practice? While the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme is probably the largest single anti-poverty program anywhere, there has been very little rigorous evaluative research.
The presentation reports results of a major study on the performance of the scheme in one of the India’s poorest states, Bihar, drawing on a forthcoming report documenting results from a panel survey of 3,000 households in rural Bihar 2009-10. A variety of data sources and methods are employed—including both observational (econometric) and experimental methods—to address the key questions about performance of the scheme. The results confirm the potential for this scheme to reduce poverty but point to a number of specific performance issues that impede realizing that potential in practice. The results reveal a large in-met demand for work on the scheme in Bihar, and very low awareness of what needs to be done to obtain work, and low participation by poor people in decisions about the scheme. A randomized awareness intervention using a specially designed fictional movie is shown to impact awareness, and more so for certain key sub-groups. Specific actionable areas for reform are identified.
Rozgar Guarantee? Assessing India’s Biggest Anti-Poverty Program in India’s Poorest State (822kb pdf)
by Puja Dutta, Rinku Murgai, Martin Ravallion and Dominique van de Walle |
RSS