Role Played by MGNREGA during Covid-19 Lockdown Period in India

Abstract

The Novel Coronavirus or Covid-19 which spread from Wuhan province of China in December 2019 in no time turned out to be a pandemic. The governments of the different economies of the world had no choice other than calling lockdown to contain the virus from spreading. The Covid-19 along with the lockdown created distress among these migrant workers and the people of the country in general. Now, to cope up with situation the Government of India tried to secure livelihoods of people especially in rural areas by providing employment opportunity through MGNREGA in the non- containment zone. This study has tried to analyse the efficacy of MGNREGA in securing the livelihood of the rural people and the reverse migrants. It is based on the secondary data referred from the various sources like Ministry of Rural Development, research articles, journals, newspapers, websites and the same has been analysed and examined. It has been found that due to the huge reverse migration, there were high demand for the 100 days jobs backed up by non-migrant rural work force. This resulted in less job days per person, it has been found that people on an average could get only 45 person day/s job per person.