Premium
Does Guaranteed employment promote resilience to climate change? The case of India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act ( MGNREGA )
Author(s) -
GodfreyWood Rachel,
Flower Benjamin C. R.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
development policy review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.671
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1467-7679
pISSN - 0950-6764
DOI - 10.1111/dpr.12309
Subject(s) - resilience (materials science) , corporate governance , state (computer science) , psychological resilience , business , economic growth , climate change , development economics , economics , finance , psychology , physics , algorithm , computer science , psychotherapist , thermodynamics , ecology , biology
India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act ( MGNREGA ) is the largest labour guarantee scheme in the world, offering 100 days of paid labour to every rural household. This article reviews the growing evidence base, assessing the extent to which the scheme can be said to contribute to resilience to climate change, based on its effectiveness as a safety net and driver of household accumulation, its ability to create assets which build collective resilience, and its support for transformations of exploitative social relations. The article concludes that the MGNREGA has already made a major contribution to resilience, but requires improvements in governance and state capacity to maximize its contribution.