Rural Women Empowerment through MGNREGA in Hisar District of Haryana

摘要

The paper has analysed income and employment generation by the rural women in Haryana through MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005) popularly known as NREGA, which was aimed at ensuring legal right to work of 100 daysto poor rural household whoever is willing to work at a minimum wage rate. In India, labour force participation rate of women is 31.56% which is less than half of that of man i. e. 68.44%, while in Haryana and Hisar under MGNREGA among the labour force,the participation of women is 34.34 and 41.68%, respectively. Since the beginning of scheme in whole of Haryana, total man days performed were 262.81 lakh out of which 90.26 lakh were performed by rural women. In Haryana, MGNREGA was launched in 2008 inall the districts. The involvement of rural women for wage earning through MGNREGA showed an increasing trend every year from 2008 to December 2011. As under this scheme, the work is provided within the village periphery so being easier for women to work. Wages are paid on the basis of work measurement and there is no time bound attendance on worksite which facilitates the rural women to work according to their suitability during lean hours in a day and days unemployed elsewhere in a year accordingly. In this way MGNREGA not only provided employment to unskilled rural women but also it had wide impact on the enhancement of wage earning of rural women, which leads to strengthening of their resource-base and makes them financially self-dependent and providing them security against social & family exploitation. MGNREGA is very much helpful in rural women empowerment and ultimately increasing their socio- economic status in long-run.