THE RELEVANCE OF NREGA IN ENSURING A CORRUPTION LESS WAGE EMPLOYMENT PROGRAMME AND WOMEN EMPOWERMENT - A CASE STUDY

The most ambitious and universal poverty eradication progrmme introduced in India since independence is the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). The historic National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) came into force on February 2, 2006 in 200 hundred most backward Indian districts and later from April 1 st 2008 onwards extended to cover all the districts in the country. It ensures the livelihood security of the poor households in the rural areas by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment, to the adult members who are willing to do unskilled manual labour, in every financial year. It resembles the Argentinian job creation schemes, the plan jefes de Hogar introduced in 2002, which helped them to recover from the virtual collapse of their economy. The present study is an attempt to evaluate the performance of NREGA as a corruptionless wage employment programme and to analyze the impact of NREGA on the empowerment of rural women. The paper is divided in to two sections. Section I presents a brief discussion of the concept of women empowerment. It also deals with a brief discussion of the unique features of NREGA as a wage employment programme. The second section deals with the experience of a village panchayat in Kerala in attaining the twin objectives of implementing NREGS without corruption and enhancement of women empowerment.