Mgnrega - an inclusive growth scheme for economic empowerment of rural women in kerala

For long years, Women and their welfare has been a matter of concern for development thinkers, planners, policy makers and administrators. How well they can be protected and what steps can be adopted for bringing them to the forefront of development were the agenda of the policy makers. A real transformation takes place if women participation and their advancement are focused as women are often the victims of vulnerability and backwardness. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme (MGNREGA) is the first ever law, that guarantees wage employment at an unprecedented scale. The scheme aims to augment wage employment opportunities by providing employment on demand and thereby extend a security net to the people and simultaneously create durable assets to alleviate some aspects of poverty and address the issue of development in the rural areas. It guarantees at least 100 days of work per year to all rural households in India whose adults are willing to do unskilled manual labour at the statutory minimum wage notified for the programme. This paper is an attempt to understand the significance of MGNREGS as a scheme for empowering women focusing the rural women in a selected panchayath in kannur district of Kerala.