MGNREGS : Employer of Last Resort A Special Reference to the Kerala

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was enacted on 23rd of August 2005 and got presidential assent on 5th of September 2005 expressing the consensus of the State to use fiscal and legal instruments to address the challenges of unemployment and poverty. Today the problem of unemployment is the single largest puzzle of Kerala which is the highest unemployment rate among the states of India which accounts 25.5 percent. But most of the unemployed are educated. The worsening unemployment situation is obviously related to the inability of the economy of the State to generate any fresh employment during the last decade. While this phenomenon of “Jobless Growth” is observable in all the States in the country, the situation in Kerala appears to be particularly distressing because most of the labour intensive/labour absorbing traditional industries depending on exports is facing a survival crisis in the liberalized trade environment. Unemployment and under employment among workers in traditional sectors are indeed of major concerns.The significance of MGNREGA lies in the fact that it creates a right- based framework for wage employment programmes and makes the Government legally accountable for providing employment to those who ask for it. In this way, the legislation goes beyond providing a social safety net towards guaranteeing the right to employment. In Kerala, the program was initiated in February 2006 in the rural areas of two districts – Palakkad and Wayanad. The programme was extended to Kasaragod and Idukki by February, 2007 in second phase and to the remaining 10 districts by January 2009 in third phase. This programme came to be known as a Kerala State Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. The responsibility has been assigned primarily to Local-Self Governments. Despite high levels of unemployment in Kerala, the high levels of literacy mean that unemployed men are educated and even though many men signed up initially and had job cards made, they do not want to do unskilled manual work and therefore have not applied for work on the scheme. While women too are educated they have not felt it to be below their dignity and in fact women frequently said that NREGA work, being 'government work', gave them a higher status. There are several constraints which hinder the effective implementation like difficulty in identification of sufficient number of projects, lack of staff at Gram Panchayat level, lack of participation of male members, lack of provisions for undertaking schemes require material and skilled labour cost , lack of awareness among various stakeholders , lack of capacity among the supervisors and monitors, reluctance in collaborating with the NGO sector in the state, lack of cooperation and collaboration between the project staff and Panchayat functionaries at various levels, lack of interest among the elected representatives, etc.This paper analyse the performance of employment generated by MGNREGS in kerala, participation of under privileged class like SCs, STs and women and analyse various issues related with this programme in Kerala. The notable feature of this scheme is high participation of women which constitute about 90 percent that is why this programme is also known ‘Women Programme’