A Comparative Analysis on Expenditure Incurred and Average Wages Differences Under Mgnrega in Gujarat and Haryana

In India, various poverty alleviation programs and schemes have been implemented since economic reforms in 1991. MGNREGA is one of the vital and most important programs that have been put into practice so far. Notification of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) came on Sep. 7, 2005, and was launched on Feb. 2, 2006. The program has been renamed as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) since October 2009. This research paper is about the average wages paid under MGNREGA in the state of Haryana and Gujarat and the details of expenditures. The period of the study has been taken from the financial year 2017-18 to the financial year 2020-21. The study is mainly based on secondary data collected from various publications of the Ministry of Rural Development, Govt. of Gujarat, and Haryana. We found in the study that the expenditure incurred on MGNREGA in Gujarat is always very high than Haryana during the period of the study while the average wages paid in Gujarat is always very low than in Haryana. Both the Central and State governments should review the baseline for paying wages to the workers under MGNREGA and should minimize the differences in wage rates between the states.