National Experiences in Building Social Protection Floors: India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme

This study highlights three central themes of the MGNREGA: first, the innovative policy framework of the Act, which brings together rights-based entitlements, demand-driven employment, and citizen-centred monitoring. Second, it assesses the practices of access, benefit allocation and labour protection in the MGNREGA works. And third, it reviews the administrative organisation of governance, finances and coordination within the larger policy framework. The study concludes that the employment guarantee schemes based on MGNREGA reflect many of the provisions of Recommendation No. 202. They show some remarkable features from which other countries – or also other states and regions within India – can learn. In fact, the experience of India’s employment guarantee has generated much interest in other countries as a potential model for South-South policy learning. There are, however, some challenges associated with the implementation processes. This study offers some orientations on how these could be addressed in the interest of further enhancing social protection in India.