National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was launched in 2006 in 200 most backward districts of the country. On October 2, 2009, the scheme was named Mahatama Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). In this scheme, each rural family was provided a guaranteed 100 days of unskilled wage employment. Employment creation of 230 crore human-days was achieved in 2012- 13 and 39661 crore rupees were spent on this programme.
It aims to enhance livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. NREGA was scoped up to covered all the districts of India from 1 April 2008.The statute is hailed by the government as “the largest and most ambitious social security and public works programme in the world’. More districts were covered across the country, later from 1st April, 2008.
This scheme has been implemented on a very large scale and the World Bank even mentioned the NREGA as an excellent example of rural development in the World Development Report of 2014. Every Indian rural citizen is entitled to receive employment within 15 days of registering under this scheme. Once the registration has been done, the worker is eligible for an unemployment allowance from the Government as well, if employment has not been found within the stipulated period.
