INTRODUCTION

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is one of the foremost social security programmes in India. It guarantees minimum wage, reduction of poverty, and checks migration of population from rural areas to urban areas and reducing rural hunger. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was an Indian job guarantee scheme, enacted by the legislature of India on 25^th August, 2005 and it had come into force and implemented on 2^nd February, 2006 in the Anantapur district, Andhra Pradesh. The act was renamed as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) on 2^nd October 2009. It was implemented in all the states of India in three different phases. Phase-I was introduced in 200 of the most backward districts of the country out of the total districts of 615, and again with an additional to 130 districts in phase-II 2007 – 2008. The Act was notified in the remaining 285 rural districts of India from April 1, 2008 in phase-III (, 2005).

The Act guarantees to one who works minimum hundred days out of 365 days per year and he/she must give some requisition within fifteen days. An unemployment allowance should be provided to the inability workers, one who is not able to work for 15 days from the date, the Act provided some compensation (Mukherjee, 2016).

   Initially, it ensured that the legal right to work for a hundred days for poor people, who was willing to work for a minimum wage rate, especially in rural areas, that would turn to reduce the flow of rural to urban migration. Its addition to, other important objective of the Act is to strengthened the Panchayat Raj Institution (PRIs)

The major dimensions of the impact of MGNREGA could be summarized by the following activities such as, increased employment opportunities, major participation by poor SC and ST population, economic empowerment of poor women, relief from rural village from moneylenders, disengagement from hazardous work, rural asset formation, improvement in rural environment and sanitation, creates SHG by MGNREGA, reducing the rural partiality, hunger, unemployment and migration.

The Act creates some awareness to the people about the Panchayat Raj Institution and government activities, increasing purchasing power and agricultural production, savings, increase in income, expenditure and strengthening the PRI.

The average days of work allocated to the ST job-card householders were less than for the SC communities, but the former group had less easy access to the registration of job cards and spent more time getting the jobs than other social groups. Only 36 per cent of the tribal respondents were aware of the provision for a minimum number of days of employment, a lower percentage than from the SC and general communities. Similarly, only 42 percent of tribal respondents were aware of the provision for a minimum wage rate in the scheme; this was a larger percentage than their SC counterparts but lagged far behind those from the OBC and general communities (Mishra, Behera, & Nayak, 2010). In addition, an interesting and encouraging observation was the scheme to reduce the migration of people from rural to urban areas (Devi & Kumar, 2011). The Act has a positive contribution to the generation of employment, social protection for women and eradicating the poverty in rural areas (Mary & M, 2014).

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The MGNREGA is the main reason to economic changes in rural areas. The wage rates have increased in agriculture and allied activities in rural regions. It creates a shortage of labourers in agriculture and allied activities. There is no wage rate difference existing between the wages of MGNREGA and females’ wage of agriculture at present. Hence women's participation is very high, especially SC women. The Act ensures a minimum wage to the workers. The minimum wage will not create high productivity and changes in rural areas. Many poverties alleviation programmes have not achieved the target because of, lack of management, expensive administration, corruption, political intervention and so on. The MGNREGA Act also has the same problems. The Act has not considered the classifications of various factors such as economic, occupation, geographical location, socio-culture and rural divisions.

In this study area, researcher identified many problems while collecting data from the workers such as no work side facilities, wage determination problem, degradation of grazing land, create laziness among rural youths, low work productivity (may be “Not worked”), lack of work tools, lack of awareness and administration problems, political intervention, partiality, corruption, and the participants are the pregnant women, children and old aged person.

OBJECTIVE

The basic objective of the study is to analyze the income distribution and social economic conditions of MGNREGA Households in Dindigul district of Tamil Nadu.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

In India, Scheduled Castes (SCs) people are mainly depending upon the agriculture and agricultural related activities. There are no alternative employment opportunities available for most of the SCs population other than agriculture operations.  The Planning Commission in the year 2004-05 had estimated that more than half the SCs (about 53.5 percent) in rural areas were living below the poverty line. After implementation of MGNREGA, the poverty among SCs in rural areas fell 22 percentage points- from 53.5 per cent in 2004-05 to 31.5 per cent in 2011-12 (Jha, 2014).

In this situation the Act was introduced (Phase-I) in 200 most backward districts of the country for poor Below Poverty Line – (BPL) people. As a result, 62 per cent of the new employment by MGNREGA in Phase I and II are utilized by the SC and ST communities, since majority of them are very poor as high. Only six districts were covering in Phase I implementation in Tamil Nadu State such as the districts are Cuddalore, Dindigul, Nagapattinam, Sivagangai, Tiruvannamalai, Viluppuram. The Dindigul district was selected on the basis of most economic backward district index of Tamil Nadu.

The Act was implemented without any consideration of rural -regional differences. Therefore, the study was done purposefully and selected different rural regions, such as city surrounded rural regions, primitive rural region/hilly regions and backward rural regions.

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

The study has covered micro region of Dindigul district only. The researcher interacted only with Scheduled Castes people, not with the people of other communities. Troubles also were faced in getting relevant data from the villages.

METHODS AND MATERIALS

The study has been carried out in the area of Dindigul district of Tamil Nadu state during the period of 2012–2016. The field survey has been carried out from May 2014 to June 2015. Out of 14 blocks of Dindigul district, only three blocks were selected purposefully, such as city surrounded rural regions of Dindigul block, primitive rural region/hilly regions of Kodaikanal block and backward rural regions of Batlagundu block. The sample size of the study is 345. They were selected from MGNREGA workers of Scheduled castes communities through proportionate random sampling technique at 10 per cent level, which constituted 130 (37.70 per cent), 90 (26.10 per cent) and 125 (36.20 per cent) samples from Dindigul block, Kodaikanal block and Batlagundu block respectively. Three village Panchayats were selected from each block. The major beneficiaries were scheduled castes people in the nine village Panchayats.

ANALYSIS THE INCOME DISTRIBUTION AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONDITIONS (RESPONDENTS/HOUSEHOLDS)

The annual income of MGNREGA workers and their family represents with the variables of gender, age, education, marital status, community, occupation, types of houses, types of family, size of family, and the number of employees/income earners and migrant workers of the family. Karl Pearson Chi-square test was used in the income distribution analysis on socio-economic conditions.

Pearson Chi-Square Test

Chi-Square, symbolically written as x² (Pronounced as Ki-square), is a statistical measure used in the context of sampling analysis for comparing a variance to a theoretical variance (Kothari, 2004). As a non-parametric test, it “could be used to determine if categorical data show dependency or the two classifications are independent. It could also be used to make comparisons between theoretical populations and actual data when categories are used”. (Neil & R, 1978)

$X^2=\sum _{}\frac{(O_{ij-}{E}_{ij}{)}^2}{E_{ij}}$

O_ij   - Observed frequency of the cell in ith row and jth column.

E_ij   - Expected frequency of the cell in ith row and jth column.

$E=\frac{RT\times CT}{N}$

E   - Expected frequency.

RT   - The row total is row containing the cell.

CT   - The column total is column containing the cell.

N   - The total number of observations.

The table value is calculated from V=(r-1) (c-1). Where, r is row and c are column.

CONCLUSION

This study found that females, daily wage earners, married, youngest, illiterate, SCG category, thatched/tiled houses, nuclear families and non-migrant workers were the major participants in MGNREGA programe. Joint family was getting higher annual income than nuclear family. Size of family determines increase or decrease of the annual household income. As a result, more incomes were from more employees of the family.

The study concluded that there is a significant level association existing between annual income of MGNREGA workers/households and their socio-economic conditions, such as the participants’ gender, age, community and occupation, type of family, size of family, number of employees and migrant workers of the family in the study area.  While, there is no significant level association existing between annual income and socio-economic conditions with respect to education, type of houses, and marital status. Hence, the MGNREGA is one of the   major factors in determining the income level and also the socio-economic conditions of the of scheduled castes workers in the study area.

SUGGESTIONS

If one analyses the economic history of poverty reduction in India right from First Five Year Plan to end of the Twelfth Five Year Plan one could understand that the answer for this doubt seems to be in that direction only. The Director Sathyajith Ray one who took movie about poverty in India, was rewarded with best Directors Award, the Economist Amartiya Sen one who wrote intensively about poverty was rewarded with Nobel Prize, Muhammd Yunus one who introduced the concept of Micro-finance/Self Help Groups among poor Women in Bangladesh was rewarded with Nobel Prize, Mother Teresa one who dedicated her life for the poor was rewarded with Nobel Prize, the film “Salaam Bombay” rewarded with a lot of awards in India and abroad and the list continues till now. All those who wrote intensively about poverty in India, those who took movies about poverty in India, those who acted in movies as poor person, it seems that, became very rich in India and also in abroad. But the people who are living below the poverty line still living under poverty only. Only the definitions changed from the amount of calories needed in a day to wage per day, then it ended with multi-dimensional approach to poverty. The government or the government appointed committees like Y K Alagh Committee, Lakdawala Formula, Suresh Tendulkar Committee, C. Rangarajan Committee though varies from one another with respect to number of people who live below the poverty line in India, have one common point that is the per centage of poverty reduction is not as expected level, whatever may be their approaches in defining poverty. The socio-economic Census 2011 has stated out of 1000 million people, who live in rural India, fifty per cent of them have less than five cents of land. They are simply daily wage workers, agri cooli workers or casual labourers in farm sector. Unless these people get an opportunity, either directly or indirectly, of what is going on in the State Assemblies of different states and Parliament of India, no policies, programmes and schemes will help them to improve their standard of live. So governments both central and states should go for digitalisation of the rural areas immediately. Employment generation schemes, income generation schemes, poverty eradication programmes in rural areas should be very well connected and operated only through their bank accounts. Digitalisation is the only way to get rid of corruption at all levels. Definitely the targeted group will get benefit out of digitalisation. (1). Huge investment on infrastructural facilities like Bullet train, eight-line highways, port development, more airports, constructing large dams etc. (2). More liberalisation of FDI with respect to retail sector, export and import tariff etc. (3). More investment to boost the agricultural sector and rural infrastructural development. Starting food processing industries with air-conditioned warehousing facilities and air-conditioned containers facilities in village level at least block level in the beginning are welcome one. Repair and maintenance of existing ponds, lakes and canals for water harvesting and constructing more check dams to store the water should be considered at war footing. (4). More allotment to MSME under start-up programme, make in India programme and Mudra scheme. (5). Atleast consolidation of Fiscal deficit at current level is a well come effort. If the above items are considered seriously and incorporated in the budgets in the coming years, we hope that it will solve the basic and fundamental burning problems like unemployment, poverty, rural development and social inequality within five years (Arunachalam, 2021).