Revision summary
MGNREGA is a legal rural employment right, not a scheme of grace. It supports landless and women more than proprietary farmers. Development here is a wage floor and some local assets. It can check distress migration when implementation works. It does not replace land or industrial rural jobs.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
MGNREGA is a rights-based wage floor in rural India. As rural development it is livelihood security, women’s cash, and a bargain against distress migration, not a substitute for land reform.
Body
What it does
- One hundred days of unskilled work as a legal claim, a shift from charity works.
- It raises reservation wages and can slow footloose labour in Breman’s sense when paid on time.
- Women and SC/ST often use it more, which touches feminization of poverty and caste landlessness.
Development meaning
- Assets (tanks, roads) are uneven. The core development is bargaining power of the rural poor against dominant-caste employers Srinivas mapped.
- A. R. Desai would still ask whether it changes agrarian class or only manages surplus labour.
Limits
- Delay, leakage, and elite capture of works. It is not industrial ruralisation.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD MG[MGNREGA] --> W[Wage right] W --> B[Bargain versus local malik] W --> F[Women cash]
Conclusion
MGNREGA develops rural society as a right to wage, especially for women and the landless. It is real and modest: a floor, not a new agrarian structure.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Write a note on the uneven impact of 'Green Revolution' on rural society.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2016 · Q5(a)). View answer →
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Is NREGA anti-farmer?
It raises labour cost for employers. For labourers it is development.
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Does it create lasting assets?
Sometimes. Its surest asset is the legal claim to work.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2015 · Q5(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Important components of National Education Policy in India.
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