study, external<\/a> by economists Karthik Muralidharan, Paul Niehaus, and Sandip Sukhtankar found that the broader, economy-wide impacts of the scheme boosted beneficiary households’ earnings by 14% and cut poverty by 26%. Workers demanded higher wages, land returns fell, and job gains were larger in villages, the study found.<\/p>\nBut many say the scheme’s durability also underscores a deeper structural problem: India’s chronic inability to generate enough non-farm jobs to absorb surplus rural labour.<\/p>\n
Agriculture has consistently lagged behind the broader economy, growing just 3% annually since 2001\u201302, compared with 7% for the rest of the economy.<\/p>\n
Critics such as Nitin Pai of the Takshashila Institution, a think-tank, argue that the scheme cushions distress but does little to raise long-term rural productivity, and may even blunt incentives for agricultural reform.<\/p>\n
“With [the scheme] we’re merely treating a serious underlying malaise with steroids,” said Mr Pai in a post on X.<\/p>\n
The government’s Economic Survey 2023\u201324 questions whether demand under the scheme truly mirrors rural hardship.<\/p>\n
If that was the case, data should show higher fund use and employment in poorer states with higher unemployment, the survey says.<\/p>\n
Yet, it notes, Tamil Nadu, with under 1% of the country’s poor, received nearly 15% of the scheme’s funds, while Kerala, with just 0.1% of the poor, accounted for almost 4% of federal allocations.<\/p>\n
The survey adds that the actual work generated depends largely on a state’s administrative capacity: states with trained staff can process requests on time, directly influencing how much employment is provided.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To be sure, the scheme has faced persistent challenges, including underfunding and delays in wage payments. West Bengal’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-331229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}