The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act aims at enhancing the livelihood security of people in rural areas by guaranteeing 100 days of wage-employment in a financial year to a rural household. It is perhaps the first of its kind in the world when a government has pledged an economic safety net to two-thirds of the country's population.

This comprehensive book is an attempt to understand the working of the operational part of this act—the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Scheme (MGNREGS). The expert contributors to this book have presented evidences of implementation and impact of the scheme across India, including both agriculturally developed states and the backward ones, and states where the scheme is better implemented as well as those where it is not. Their essays go on to explain the meaning, context, issues and development policy implications of MGNREGS through theoretical and empirical papers, thus providing answers to questions regarding:

The timing and purpose of the legislation, and the design and structure of the program
Desirability of state-sponsored employment programs in the era of liberalization
The likely impacts of such a massive wage employment and public works program
This volume offers an insight into the changing thrust of India's anti-poverty program and her experiments with various employment schemes.