The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (MGNREGA) was an Indian social welfare measure that aimed to guarantee the 'right to work'. This act was passed on 23 August 2005 and was implemented in February 2006 under the UPA government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh following the tabling of the bill in parliament by the Minister for Rural Development Raghuvansh Prasad Singh. The bill was originally known as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). In 2025, it was repealed by the Parliament of India after the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha passed the Viksit Bharat–Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025 (VB–G RAM G). The new legislation replaced MGNREGA with an updated rural employment and livelihood guarantee framework under the Ministry of Rural Development.
It aimed to enhance livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of assured and guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to at least one member of every Indian rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. Women are guaranteed one half of the jobs made available under the MGNREGA and efforts are made to ensure that cross the limit of 50%. Another aim of MGNREGA is to create durable assets (such as roads, canals, ponds and wells). Employment is to be provided within 5 km of an applicant's residence, and minimum legal wage under the law is to be paid. If work is not provided within 15 days of applying, applicants are entitled to an unemployment allowance. That is, if the government fails to provide employment, it has to provide certain unemployment allowances to those people. Thus, employment under MGNREGA is a legal entitlement. Apart from providing economic security and creating rural assets, other things said to promote NREGA are that it can help in protecting the environment, empowering rural women, reducing rural-urban migration and fostering social equity, among others."
The act was first proposed in 1991 by then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. It was finally accepted in the parliament and commenced implementation in 625 districts of India. Based on this pilot experience, NREGA was scoped up to cover all the districts of India from 1 April 2008. The statute was praised by the government as "the largest and most ambitious social security and public works program in the world". In 2009 the World Bank had chided the act along with others for hurting development through policy restrictions on internal movement. However in its World Development Report 2014, the World Bank called it a "stellar example of rural development". MGNREGA is to be implemented mainly by gram panchayats (GPs). The law states it provides many safeguards to promote its effective management and implementation. The act explicitly mentions the principles and agencies for implementation, list of allowed works, financing pattern, monitoring and evaluation, and detailed measures to ensure transparency and accountability.
History
Since 1960, 30 years were expended in struggling to find suitable employment schemes in India's vast rural hinterland. The experiences of these decades provided important lessons to the government. These included the 'Rural Manpower Programme' which exposed the tribulations of financial management, the 'Crash Scheme for Rural Employment' on planning for outcomes, a 'Pilot Intensive Rural Employment Programme' of labour-intensive works, the 'Drought Prone Area Programme' of integrated rural development, 'Marginal Farmers and Agricultural Labourers Scheme' of rural economic development, the ‘Food for Work Programme’ (FWP) of holistic development and better coordination with the states, the ‘National Rural Employment Programme’ (NREP) of community development, and the ‘Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme’ (RLEGP) of focus on landless households. The Planning Commission later approved the scheme and it was adopted on national scale.
In April 1989, to converge employment generation, infrastructure development and food security in rural areas, the government integrated NREP and RLEGP into a new scheme Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY). The most significant change was the decentralization of implementation by involving the local people through local village governments or Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) and hence a decreasing role of bureaucracy. In October 1993, the Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS) was initiated to provide employment to agricultural hands during the lean agricultural season. The role of PRIs was reinforced with the local self-government at the district level called the 'Zilla Parishad' as the main implementing authority. Later, the EAS was merged with Sampoorna Gramin Rojgar Yojana (SGRY) in 2001.
On 1 April 1999, the JRY was revamped and renamed to Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana (JGSY) with a similar objective. The role of PRIs was further reinforced with the local self-government at the village level called the ‘Village Panchayats’ as the sole implementing authority. In 2001, it was merged with SGRY. On 25 September 2001 to converge employment generation, infrastructure development and food security in rural areas, the government integrated EAS and JGSY into a new scheme SGRY. The role of PRIs was retained with the 'Village Panchayats' as the sole implementing authority. Due to implementation issues, it was merged with NREGA in 2006. In January 2001, the government introduced a FWP similar to the one that was initiated in 1977. Once NREGA was enacted, the two were merged in 2006. The total government allocation to these precursors of NREGA had been about three-quarters of . Employment generation programmes created after 2005 include the Prime Minister Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP).
The colonial era, when India was governed by the British, is when the problems of poverty and a lack of employment possibilities in rural areas first surfaced. The lopsided economic development pattern was caused by the colonial government's emphasis on growing the urban economy at the expense of the rural economy, which remained even after India attained independence. Additionally, the colonial authority established land revenue procedures that led to a concentration of land ownership in the hands of a select few, which in turn marginalized the rural poor. Additionally, the British promoted the growth of cash crops above food crops, which reduced agricultural productivity and brought about famine in some regions of the nation. Despite independence, the legacy of colonialism remains.
Particularly, colonialism had a lasting effect on the economic and social advancement of India, with rural areas and people being the most negatively impacted. The colonial era is still evident in the underfunding of rural infrastructure, the lack of systemic social assistance programs, and the scarcity of job prospects. To address these difficulties, a determined effort must be made to reverse the historical neglect of rural areas and give them development priority.
In response to the cries for help, the Indian government put together a nationwide welfare scheme aimed at targeting this very issue: The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, or MGNREGA. The Government of India introduced the MGNREGA social welfare program in 2005 to address the problem of unemployment and poverty in rural areas. Recognizing the high rates of unemployment and poverty in rural India, especially among the underprivileged groups of the population, led to the need for such a program.
The MGNREGA was created with the idea of giving rural households a safety net in the form of guaranteed work possibilities. Every rural household in the nation was to receive 100 days of guaranteed employment each year as part of the program, guaranteeing that each household had access to a minimum amount of income. The program was intended to be labor-intensive, with the main sources of employment being initiatives like road building, water conservation, and afforestation. The Ministry of Rural Development, a section of the Government of India’s economic bureau, was in charge of overseeing the implementation and rollout of the plan. Gram Panchayats - governing heads in rural villages, were the envoy for implementing the scheme at the local level.
Provisions
The registration process involves an application to the Gram Panchayat and issuance of job cards. The wage employment must be provided within 15 days of the date of application. The work entitlement of 100 days per household per year may be shared between different adult members of the same household. The law lists permissible works: water conservation and water harvesting; drought proofing including afforestation; irrigation works; restoration of traditional water bodies; land development; flood control; rural connectivity; and works notified by the government. The Act sets a minimum limit to the wage-material ratio as 60:40. The provision of accredited engineers, worksite facilities and a weekly report on worksites is also mandated by the Act. The Act sets a minimum limit to the wages, to be paid with gender equality, either on a time-rate basis or on a piece-rate basis. The states are required to evolve a set of norms for the measurement of works and schedule of rates. Unemployment allowance must be paid if the work is not provided within the statutory limit of 15 days. The law stipulates Gram Panchayats to have a single bank account for NREGA works which shall be subjected to public scrutiny. To promote transparency and accountability, the act mandates 'monthly squaring of accounts'. To ensure public accountability through public vigilance, the NREGA designates ‘social audits’ as key to its implementation.
The most detailed part of the Act (chapter 10 and 11) deals with transparency and accountability that lays out role of the state, the public vigilance and, above all, the social audits. For evaluation of outcomes, the law also requires management of data and maintenance of records, like registers related to employment, job cards, assets, muster rolls and complaints, by the implementing agencies at the village, block and state level. The legislation specifies the role of the state in ensuring transparency and accountability through upholding the right to information and disclosing information proactively, preparation of annual reports by the Central Employment Guarantee Council for the Parliament and State Employment Guarantee Councils for state legislatures, undertaking mandatory financial audits by each district along with physical audit, taking action on audit reports, developing a Citizen's Charter, establishing vigilance and monitoring committees, and developing a grievance redressal system.
The Act recommends establishment of 'Technical Resource Support Groups' at district, state and central level and active use of information technology, like creation of a 'Monitoring and Information System (MIS)' and a NREGA website, to assure quality in implementation of NREGA through technical support. The law allows convergence of NREGA with other programmes. As NREGA intends to create ‘additional’ employment, the convergence should not affect employment provided by other programmes.
The law and the Constitution of India The Act aimed to follow the Directive Principles of State Policy enunciated in Part IV of the Constitution of India. The law by providing a 'right to work' is consistent with Article 41 that directs the State to secure to all citizens the right to work. The statute also seeks to protect the environment through rural works which is consistent with Article 48A that directs the State to protect the environment.