Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) and Agricultural Wage Rate Much liked opinion

has been expressed that there has been inadequate supply of farm labour for quite sometime now during the peak seasons of farming operations has get the attention of policy maker, academicians etc. Farmers from across the country are also up in arms on the question of MNREGA having caused not only shortage in labour side but also in a substantial increase in wage rate. Before going into the question as to whether MNREGA has really impacted the level of wage rate in the farm sector, it is important that we get the facts in all their aspects right. To begin with a broad outline of the employment details of persondays generated in lakhs in different states under the well orchestrated Scheme. This is given in table 1. It is seen that during the years 2008-09 and 2009-10 the number of persondays generated are 21633 lakhs and 28360 lakhs respectively. As regards wage rate it has been revised in majority of states - one on 1 st January, 2009 and other on 1st January, 2011. Now that MNREGA wage rate has revised by the Central Government in most of the states is not only weigh above Rs. 100 per day but also it ranges between Rs. 120 and Rs. 179. It is remarkable that the year 2008-09 would goes down in the history of Public Welfare Employment programme of employment generation is one of maximum number of persondays generated that is, 28360 lakhs. Compared the farm wage rate, the wage rate of MNREGA is relatively higher. This employment generation Scheme has triggered a sort of employment among the rural assert their rights for livelihood security. Rights based approach underline

MNREGA has created a milieu of demand for higher wages which household farm sector may not be able to cope with so easily and without under growing. Shock a fact in the

process of transaction one of the essential facts of this Scheme is that it has dealt with a blow to gender discrimination in the rural labour market and has put both males and females on an equal footing in regard to wages.

It is commonsensical perception that the increased level of wage rate under the scheme would not doubt put upward pressure on farm wage. There is equally contrary view that the proposed of labour getting work under the Scheme is not significant and that it would not influence the farm wage rate in any way. This view support itself on the basic premise that 4 to 5 per cent of labour farms in rural India employed under MNREGA has practically no bearing on the increased wage level in the farm sector.

Before going headlong into conflictual space of the debate, we would like to make an attempt at analyzing the wage data for two discounting years i.e. 2004-05 across major states to see if the different wage rates across and within each states over this two time periods is due to the interaction of the Scheme of MNREGA in the year 2005. The Scheme has such took off in the year 2007-08 and 2008-09 since its modest beginnings in 2005. For this analysis of variation has been carried out on quarterly data of 2004 and that of 2009 for 16 major states to see if there is a significant difference between time dependant variable of MNREGA and state. The results of the analysis are given below:

Table

NAREGA Employment Details from 2006-07 to 2011-12 S.NO. 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 Total STATES 2 ANDHRA PRADESH ARUNACHAL PRADESH ASSAM BIHAR GUJARAT HARYANA HIMACHAL PRADESH JAMMU AND KASHMIR KARNATAKA KERALA MADHYA PRADESH MAHARASHTRA PUNJAB RAJASTHAN SIKKIM TAMIL NADU TRIPURA UTTAR PRADESH WEST BENGAL CHHATTISGARH JHARKHAND UTTARAKHAND MANIPUR MEGHALAYA MIZORAM NAGALAND ORISSA PUDUCHERRY ANDAMAN AND NICOBAR LAKSHADWEEP CHANDIGARH DADRA & NAGAR HAVELI DAMAN & DIU GOA 2006-07 3 7.50 0.05 6.33 6.59 1.11 0.27 0.33 0.36 2.45 0.23 21.79 1.76 0.17 11.04 0.03 2.02 0.55 9.09 4.86 7.74 5.75 0.45 0.21 0.27 0.09 0.14 8.83 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 100.00 2007-08 4 13.99 0.02 3.39 5.95 0.63 0.25 0.68 0.23 1.38 0.42 19.16 1.29 0.13 11.68 0.06 4.49 1.26 9.49 6.74 9.16 5.20 0.56 0.34 0.29 0.22 0.17 2.82 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 100.00 2008-09 5 12.64 0.16 3.47 4.58 0.98 0.32 0.95 0.36 1.33 0.71 13.62 1.94 0.19 22.33 0.12 5.56 1.62 10.50 3.64 5.75 3.47 0.48 1.32 0.40 0.58 0.94 2.00 0.01 0.00 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 100.00 (Person days in % ) 2009-10 2010-11 2011-12 6 7 8 14.26 13.03 2.53 0.06 0.12 0.00 2.58 1.83 1.56 4.01 6.23 2.28 2.06 1.91 2.42 0.21 0.33 0.54 1.00 0.85 1.06 0.45 0.82 0.10 7.06 4.27 0.88 1.20 1.87 0.00 9.25 8.55 7.48 0.97 0.78 1.50 0.27 0.29 0.47 15.86 11.77 20.73 0.15 0.19 0.06 8.43 10.44 14.34 1.62 1.46 1.67 12.55 13.02 16.53 5.47 6.04 3.51 3.67 4.32 12.99 2.97 3.23 4.68 0.64 0.90 0.47 1.08 1.15 0.21 0.52 0.78 0.10 0.60 0.65 0.16 1.00 1.30 0.00 1.95 3.80 3.67 0.03 0.04 0.01 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.00 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.01 0.01 0.02 100.00 100.00 100.00

It is seen that there is a significant interaction between state and time dependant MNREGA factor and also a significant affect of MNREGA factor (a both P-Value <0.05 and F >F critical).