Assessing the Role of MGNREGA in Women Empowerment

Abstract

Background: The MGNREGA act, which came into effect in September 2005, is a socially mediated program designed to improve livelihood security in rural areas by giving every household with adult members who volunteer to perform unskilled manual labor at least 100 days of legal guaranteed wage employment throughout a fiscal year. Objectives: 1. To study the socio-economic profile of selected respondents. 2. To study the role of MGNREGA regading women empowerment. Materials and Methods: The 100 respondents were personally interviewed for this study, which was carried out in the Behta and Hargaon blocks of the Sitapur district. Scheduled Caste, Other Backward Caste, General Caste, and Scheduled Tribes were the criteria used to choose the respondents. An ex- post facto research design was also used for the study. Four villages were selected purposively from each block. There were 25 women respondents selected purposively from each village, for a total of 100 women respondents about the MNREGA programe. With the aid of a pre arranged timetable, Personal Interview process was used to gather the data. The variables were chosen in accordance with the study's goals and classified as independent and dependent variables. The data was analyzed to determine the rank order, frequency, percentage and standard deviation. Results and Discussion: Study reveals that the majority of respondents (66.00%) were middle-aged, which means they were between the ages of 28 and 42; they were illiterate (4.00%), belonged to the scheduled caste (62.0%), lived in a joint family system (55.00%), had between six and ten family members (50.00%) and owned marginal land, mixed houses (64.0%) and had an annual family income of Rs. 61001-72000 (34.0%). They also possessed materials with farm power (57.00%), farm implements in Sickle (96.00%), transportation materials in Cycle (93.00%), and houses with materials in Watch (62.0%). It was noted that the state of communication media possession was notably advantageous. The majority of those interviewed (57.00%) are involved with two organizations. Important sources of information were determined to be the Gram Pradhan (5.46 scores) under formal sources, family members (600 scores) under informal sources and mobile phones (5.95 ratings) under mass media sources. The limitations mentioned by the participants: The 100 days wage employment was not given in a financial year" , "lack of facilities such as water shade" to "medicine at worksite, monitoring by NGOs and civil societies was not done" , "withdrawal of money from bank was time taking" , to resulting "60:40 wage and material ratio was not maintained" , "Job cards were issued less in comparison to registration" , "Job cards were not issued within 15 days of application consequently wastage of time."  Summary & Conclusion: Respondents' suggestions included "worksite facilities such as childcare, drinking water, medication, and shade should be provided" and "the job card should be issued within 15 days of application, both of which were deemed crucial for additional consideration.