National Rural Employment Guarantee Act

Last chance to fight poverty?

•Poverty has increased

• More rural unemployed now than ever
• Schemes to generate employment have failed to retain
jobs
 National Rural Employment Guarantee Act

Last chance to fight poverty?

•Focus on capital intensive schemes

• Clinical way of looking at wage schemes
• Local people had no roles to play
 National Rural Employment Guarantee Act

Last chance to fight poverty?

•Natural resource bases like land and forest have shrunk

• They absorb less jobs than ever
• Triggers a BoP
 National Rural Employment Guarantee Act

Last chance to fight poverty?

• Poverty is ecological in nature

• NREGA has the right orientation
• It can be used to create assets that contribute to local
livelihoods
• A change in approach needed
 National Rural Employment Guarantee Act

Last chance to fight poverty?

•Backward districts are resource-rich but less governed

• They hold 60 percent of India’s poor
• Local bodies need to be empowered
• Implementation must focus on productive assets
 National Rural Employment Guarantee Act

Last chance to fight poverty?

• NREGA is an effective way to eradicate poverty

• For this we need to understand the poverty in India
• Poverty is ecological in nature
• Thus NREGA needs to be an ecological Act