RURAL WAGE EMPLOYMENT PROGRAMMES SAMPOORNA GRAMIN ROZGAR YOJANA (SGRY): (An empirical study of district Kanpur Dehat)

Abstract

The abject poverty of about a third of India’s population is also the greatest challenge to the country’s economic, social and community development. At present the Govt. of India has several programmes and schemes to reduce urban as well as rural poverty, to provide shelter and to develop infrastructure, which leads to overall development. Since the majority of population lives in rural areas, the prime aim of these programmes is betterment of rural people and alleviation of rural poverty. The specifically designed anti-poverty programmes for generation of both self-employment and wage-employment in rural areas have been redesigned and restructured in 1999-2000 in order to enhance their efficacy or impact on the poor and improve their sustainability. These programmes comprises of various wage-providing employment programmes, Self-Employment progammes, Area Development programmes and Annapurna Programmes etc.

Wage employment programmes, an important component of the anti-poverty strategy, have sought to achieve multiple objectives. They not only provide employment opportunities during lean agricultural seasons but also in times of floods, droughts and other natural calamities. They create rural infrastructure that supports further economic activity. The main objective of the study was to assess the impact of poverty alleviation programmes in a comprehensive manner especially the employment generation and infrastructural development programmes. This study makes an earnest attempt to assess the impact of the infrastructure created during the operation of specific schemes namely Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS), Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana (JGSY) and by merging them into one Scheme, the Sampoorna Gramin Rozgar Yojana (SGRY) w.e.f 25^th September, 2001, in the district Kanpur dehat, Kanpur, U.P. during the reference period 1999-2005. The impact of the employment programmes was observed to vary from panchayat to panchayat depending upon the functioning of the rural institutions and it was found that despite the existing guidelines, finding of a number of serious defect in the implementation of the Scheme is nothing but regrettable.

To, conclude, rural development, to an extent, has infact taken place through special programmes in the Kanpur Dehat region, but because of inadequate implementations, lack of governance, non-participatory approach and somewhat faulty design of the programmes, the progress was far from satisfactory.