Performance of Mahatma Gandhi national rural employment guarantee scheme – a comparative study of Hugli and Haora district of West Bengal

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act enshrines the legal right of one hundred days of paid employment to any household, on demand. Though its scope is national, there have been wide interstate as well as inter district variation in the achievement of the objectives of the act. National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) enacted by legislation on August 25, 2005 and it was renamed as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) on 2nd October 2009. The act aims eradication of extreme poverty and at making villages self sustaining through productive assets creation. In this paper an attempt has been made to focus some lights on the measures of performance of MGNREGS In Hugli and Haora district of West Bengal. This paper investigates the status of MGNREGS in both of the districts after the implementation of the programme. However the paper finds inter block variation in some important indicators like average person days generated per household, the proportion of works completed to works taken up and the proportion of local fund spent.