Shankar Singh, co-founder of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, a labour rights’ organisation in Rajasthan, that works closely on MGNREGA.
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has consistently bucked the trend of declining labour force participation of women in India. All India participation of women in the labour force was 25.1% between 2020-21, while it was 53.19% under MGNREGA. What makes MGNREGA acceptable to the female workforce? And what has been its impact in the last 17 years on the lives of women in India? Sunaina Kumar explores in our second story of Women at Work 3.0.