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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | How MGNREGS Can Help The Rural Poor 'Step Out' Of Poverty And Climate Vulnerability -Koyel Kumar Mandal

How MGNREGS Can Help The Rural Poor 'Step Out' Of Poverty And Climate Vulnerability -Koyel Kumar Mandal

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published Published on May 3, 2017   modified Modified on May 3, 2017
-HuffingtonPost.com

A safety net for the poorest and most vulnerable populations.

Recently there has been a lot of debate in academic and policy circles about mainstreaming climate concerns in development programs in order to build the resilience of vulnerable communities. One such development initiative is the Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), whose main objective is to reduce rural poverty by providing a legal guarantee of 100 days' paid labour a year to every rural household in India and building community assets that support local livelihoods. The dual focus of MGNREGS on wages and assets, and its emphasis on natural resources management makes it an effective mechanism for co-creating benefits of social protection and climate resilience for vulnerable rural communities. However, is there scope to improve the design and implementation of the program to ensure that the rural poor "step out" of poverty and climate vulnerability? What measures can be taken to create new opportunities in order to enhance their resilience to long-term climate change?

Let's first take a step back and understand the larger vulnerability context in which MGNREGS operates. Personal assets—both physical and financial—usually provide the first layer of safety net in case of a climate shock such as flood, drought or a cyclone. The National Sample Survey Office's (NSSO) report on Household Capital Expenditure in India provides data on the average value of assets held by each "household asset holding class." A household asset holding class is defined as "the 10 decile classes of the rural All-India distribution of households by asset holding size." This means that decile 1 in the chart below comprises the poorest 10% of rural households in terms of their holding assets and decile 10 denotes the richest tenth. Almost all physical and financial assets are included.

If we count the personal assets of the poorest 50% of the rural population who are more likely to opt for MGNREGS work, it is clear that there's hardly anything to fall back on in case of a climate shock or disaster. In addition, the physical assets will also be prone to these shocks, rendering them unproductive in most cases.

Given this context, the bi-focal lens of MGNREGS's wages and assets provide an important safety net for the poorest and the most vulnerable population by addressing the immediate and underlying socio-economic risks facing them. Let's analyse each of them to understand their contribution in helping the poor "step out" of poverty and vulnerability. Average wage rate per day per person under MGNREGS in 2016-17 was ?214. Assuming that a drought-affected area gets a total of 150 days of work, income from MGNREGS wages will be ?32,100.

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HuffingtonPost.com, 2 May, 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.in/koyel-kumar-mandal/how-mgnregs-can-help-the-rural-poor-step-out-of-poverty-and-cl/


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