Public spending and rural livelihood in India: A study of MGNREGA

Abstract

Development in economics concerns with poor country, community or sector. It consists of growth in income/output along with structural changes (Singha 2010a). It essentially is a dynamic process which transforms an economy and society from a relatively backward state to a more advanced state (Bezbaruah 2010). In reality, the question of development arises only when the system/sector lacks its basic necessary ingredients (Singha and Patikar 2010). At present, as per the Tenth Five- Year Plan report (2002-2007), around 75 % of India's population are living in rural areas, hardly meeting their minimum daily needs. Further, there are evidence of cascading effects of poverty, unemployment, poor and inadequate infrastructure in the rural areas (Singha 2010b). Though Indian economy has witnessed spectacular success in terms of achieving a higher growth rate, above 5 % per annum (Negi 2010), and also became one of the 12 largest (WDR 2011) and 10 fastest growing (Saxena 2007) economies in the world, the rural community is still grossly neglected. Though the nation talks much about inclusive growth, the benefits of the government's programmes have not been percolated fully to the poor masses and the process of growth in the country has not been fully inclusive (Singha 2010b) till date. For many rural people like, smallholders, landless wage labourers and sharecroppers, and women, indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities are still facing the inability to influence decisions affecting their lives, negotiate better terms of trade, and make governmental and non-governmental organisations accountable to them (IFAD 2003). Some of this was because of the decline in public spending on rural employment programmes since the mid-1990s (Negi 2010). In the findings of Bezbaruah (2010) also opined that the rural development programmes and infrastructure projects in India are impeded due to the lack of funds from public investments, meant for rural development. Therefore, the rural infrastructure and provisions of basic facilities of rural poor can be sourced from the growing central allocations for rural development programmes and infrastructure projects.