MGNREGS as the Face of India's Social Protection system

AS PER THE International Labour Organization’s (ILO) World Social Protection Report 202022, 8.8 per cent of global working hours were lost in 2020, equivalent to 255 million full-time jobs, adversely affecting the unskilled or low-skilled labour, on whom the loss of employment fell the hardest.

- Amit Kapoor

This not only exacerbated socioeconomic inequalities with a significant population falling in poverty but will also have enormous ramifications for labour market inequalities.

According to the World Bank economic forecasts, with almost 100 million pushed into pandemic-induced poverty, the absence of resilience to socioeconomic shocks among a significant population has revealed the issues with comprehensive coverage of social protection systems worldwide. Most importantly, it has shown the indispensability of social protection schemes as the pandemic triggered a massive rollout of assistance programmes and social aids as immediate retributions to the losses incurred globally. In India, a relatively sophisticated social protection system with schemes like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and Public Distribution System (PDS) aimed at uplifting the poorest of the poor. The Indian experience with social protection is far from perfect with administrative and logistical issues underlining it, but carries with it an essential lesson in providing existential security to the most vulnerable.