Inequality among Districts of West Bengal in Implementing Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005

Abstract

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), 2005, later renamed as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), was enacted in the parliament to provide employment opportunities to the rural people of India. The State Government shall, in rural areas in the state, provide to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work not less than one hundred days of such work in every financial year. The West Bengal Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (WBREGS) came into force from February, 2006. In the present study, an attempt has been taken to review the performance of the scheme implemented in different districts of West Bengal and also to measure the inequality among the districts in implementing the scheme. Five parameters have been used to measure the performance of the districts, namely, percentage of households provided employment to the households demanded employment, percentage of households completed 100 days of employment, average person days of employment provided per household, percentage of women person days to total person days and average wage disbursed per person day. To calculate the inequality among the districts in performing the same, coefficient of variation and Ginnis coefficient have been used. Kendalls coefficient of concordance has also been used to test the propriety of the ranks obtained by different districts on the basis of different parameters.

Keywords: Employment, Person Days, Performance, Development

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