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