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Social Protection in Asia, Working Paper, October Ratna M. Sudarshan (2010)

Fieldwork carried out to understand the reasons behind the unusually large participation of women workers in the NREGA programme, find that the documented variation in women’s participation and other impacts across various states of India arise from specific context and hence provide valuable cues about the changes required for enhancing the impact of the programme.

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), initiated in 2006, is considered to be a landmark event in the history of poverty reduction strategies in India. The scheme intends to provide employment to the rural poor during the lean agricultural season. In addition to providing income when no work is available, the programme aims to create village assets and bring about inclusive and sustainable development. Further, the attempt is to provide adequate employment to women at equal wages. The programme therefore requires that one third of all workers are women.

Women’s participation in employment programme is conditioned by several factors. The nature and conditions of work provided, the burden of care responsibilities and unpaid work, local labour market conditions are some factors that influence women’s participation in public works programme. The NREG programme tries to address many of these factors, like for instance, providing crèche facility at worksite in order to enable women’s participation. Evidence shows that the at the all-India level, NREGA disproportionately involves women. However, there are also wide variations both across states and within states in the number of work days going to women.

Ratna M. Sudarshan explores, through fieldwork, the reasons behind and the implications of women’s participation in NREGA in particular and other, wider impacts. The field work was carried out over 2008-9 in selected areas of three states, Kerala, Himachal and Rajasthan. Kerala and Himachal have the “best performance on human development indicators” but the latter registered, until recently, very low women’s participation in NREGA. Rajasthan is among the poorest states of India and women’s participation in NREGA is among the highest.

The inter-state variation in women’s participation in NREGA work is conditioned by several factors. The author argues that the prior existence of a tradition of wage works in the states of Kerala and Rajasthan is one of the explanations for the high participation of women in NREGA work. On the other hand, in Himachal traditionally women do not take much part in wage work. A part of the reason lies in the fact that households in Himachal, a hill state, has high dependence on natural resources for household provisioning. This means that women are required to spend a large amount of time for provisioning responsibility. This means that often, women are not left with enough time to take part in wage works like that provided under NREGA.

On the other hand, in the state of Rajasthan, the availability of work and convenience of finding work near home are important factors in attracting women to NREGA work. These factors weigh in favour of NREGA work because the prevailing market wages for female are not much higher or different from wages provided in the programme. In Kerala, the wages paid in NREGA being higher than the prevailing market wages for women acts as an additional factor behind women’s high participation.

The frequency of wages paid in NREGA in relation to other work available and the number of earning members in a household are additional factors that influence which members of the household take up Further, NREGA work. In cases where there is a single earning member, even women prefer wage work with daily payment since wages in NREGA are paid only after a month. In the case of Kerala, the high gender disparity in market wages as well as the high level of education among the population influence women’s participation in NREGA work in two ways.

First, given the high level of literacy, men prefer to not take up unskilled manual work provided under NREGA. Second, because of the gap between the minimum wages paid in the scheme and the prevailing market wages for adult male workers it is usually women who take up NREGA work. In addition, large scale mobilisation of women through pre-existing self-help groups in Kerala and the involvement of active youth groups and other social movements in Rajasthan influence awareness and participation of women. Much of these factors are absent or not strong in Himachal.

In terms of the impact of the employment programme, the author points out that owing to women’s high participation, a large part of the income earned through NREGA work accrues to women. As a result, other than for basic consumption, the income earned is also used for women’s own personal expenditure. Further, in the area of study in Kerala, fieldwork shows that “there is a very strong motivation among people to save towards bulky expenditure and for the future”. The programme has had some positive impact on the labour market as well, especially regarding the wages earned by unskilled female workers in Kerala. Because wages paid in the NREGA are higher than the prevailing market wages for women, there has been “some upward movement of female unskilled wages” in Kerala.

However, the NREGA programme did not have a strong impact on other labour market aspects like that of stalling or reducing migration of workers significantly or raising men’s market wages in the areas where fieldwork was carried out. There have also been certain unintended, negative consequences of the programme. In particular, the author refers to the unintended consequences of the lack of availability of crèche facilities at worksites. This has resulted in “older daughters supporting the work of mothers by looking after younger siblings” and missing out on their own schooling in the process.

In view of the findings of the study, the author concludes that the NREGA has, in several cases, improved rural household income and savings, increased rural women’s participation in paid work, led to useful assets being created. However, in order to enhance the impact of the programme, there is a need to improve design of the programme, address broader aspects of poverty, strengthen active citizenship, increase women’s involvement in choice of work and improve childcare facilities to empower women.