Employment guarantee scheme and food for work programme.

Abstract

The Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) generated an employment for 3.9lakh person, years in rural Maharashtra. Thus it provided employment to 10 per cent of the 41 lakhs of workers among the weaker sections of Maharasht?a. The 32nd round of National Sample Survey (NSS) too indicates that EGS offered an employment of more than 3 lakhs person years. Thus the two independent estimates more or less agree. On an average, the EGS worker worked for 160 days a year for about Rs 3 a day. Wheat distribution on EGS, through the Food For Work (FFW) programme raised the wages to Rs 4 a day. In spite of EGS, however, 90 per cent of the household9 of EGS workers lived below the poverty line. To raise them above the poverty line, EGS workers would have to be provided work for 300 days, rather than the present 160 days or so, on a wuage rate of Rs 4 a day. A husband and wife totally depending on such wages could earn Rs 2,400 a year maintaining.ordy 1.3 dependents above the. poverty line, since Rs 720 a year per capita were needed for the very minimum food needs. A uwge rate of Rs 6 for 300 days alone could help the couple to bear'the present load of family of five, above poverty line. The Food for Work programme in 1978-79 helped to get an increase of 33 per cent and more in the EGS earnings of the workers and was considered the greatest attraction of EGS.