| By: |
Karachiwalla, Naureen;
Kosec, Katrina;
Kyle, Jordan;
Narayanan, Sudha;
Raghunathan, Kalyani |
| Abstract: |
In 2005, India passed the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA,
“the Act†), a law guaranteeing all rural households 100 days of work at a
minimum wage through the building of durable assets, which created one of the
largest anti-poverty programs in the world. Now known as the Mahatma Gandhi
NREGA (MGNREGA), a notable feature of the program is that it envisions a
democratic, bottom-up process of choosing which durable assets would be built
within a community. Toward this end, the Act gives citizens the right to
participate in the process of identifying potential projects and delegates
responsibility to village governments in selecting which assets to build. Yet,
in the long history of public works programs, there has been limited research
on how assets created under such workfare programs are selected, or how to
increase the role of women or other marginalized groups in the decision-making
process. The Act provides a list of permissible works that span natural
resource management, individual and community assets, common infrastructure
for women’s groups, and rural infrastructure more broadly. Given the scale
of the program, the assets selected at the village level have tremendous
potential to enhance rural resilience to unexpected shocks and crises,
especially those related to climate change. This is important, as extreme
weather events on the Indian subcontinent are increasing, both in frequency
and in the magnitude of their impacts on agricultural productivity, household
livelihoods, assets and incomes, and health and nutrition. These events, as
well as their impacts on incomes, often affect women more severely (Mason and
Agan 2015; Kosec et al. forthcoming). Understanding how to enhance women’s
voice and agency within the process of selecting community assets is important
for three major reasons. First, women and men may have different asset
preferences (Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004). Recent time-use survey data from
India find that women spend far more time on unpaid domestic and care work
than men (eight times as much) (India, NSO 2019). Thus, women may place
relatively more value on projects that reduce effort in collecting fuel and
water, for example. If their voices are not included in the asset selection
process, the village could miss out on a range of development projects that
would improve overall productivity, resilience, and well-being. Second, where
projects are built affects who benefits from them. Households that had MGNREGA
assets built on their own land or that live near an asset cultivate more land,
use more inputs (including their own labor), and have higher agricultural
output (Gehrke 2015; Muralidharan et al. 2021). Ensuring that women influence
asset placement is thus critical. Third, greater participation and inclusivity
in the process of selecting community development projects can increase the
perceived legitimacy and satisfaction with projects, as well as willingness to
contribute toward their construction and maintenance (Olken 2010). Within
MGNREGA, households that report playing a greater role in project selection
also report greater satisfaction with the usefulness, quality, and maintenance
of the projects (Ranaware et al. 2015). |
| Keywords: |
INDIA, SOUTH ASIA, ASIA, agriculture, agricultural productivity, assets, data, data analysis, data collection, employment, households, extreme weather events, labour market, government, income, health, living standards, natural resource user groups, nutrition, remuneration, poverty, poverty alleviation, rural employment, rural poverty, surveys, women, working women, community assets, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), women’s voice and agency, workfare programs |
| Date: |
2022 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:prnote:december2022b&r=ppm |