1) The document reviews literature on the impacts of MGNREGA implementation in India on agriculture and the environment. 2) Studies have found that MGNREGA participation leads farmers to shift to more profitable and higher-value crops, though not consistently across all regions. 3) Asset creation through MGNREGA has improved soil and water resources in many areas, reducing vulnerability of agriculture to drought while increasing water availability and biomass.

1. Theme 3:
Agriculture and Environment
Implementation of MGNREGA in India:
A Review of Impacts for Future Learning
Featuring work completed by IFPRI, Cornell University, and
IGIDR with funding from 3ie

2. Biomass
Soil quality
From MGNREGA to Agriculture
Inputs &
investment Adaptation
• Mechanisation?
• Cropping pattern
shifts?
Supply of
labour
Land levelling
Land & Soil
Livestock
Water availability
Connectivity
Water access
Wages
Work
Assets on
Private
Lands
Public lands
Area cropped,
productivity,
cropping
pattern and /
or Incomes
Household

3. Review of literature
• Environment
• Esteves, et. al (2013) & IISc(2013)
• Verma and Shah (2011)
• Narayanan, et al (2014)
• Agricultural practices
• Gehrke (2013)
• Varshney (2013)
• Bhargava (2014)
• Hari and Raghunathan (2014)

4. Review of literature: Agricultural Practices
• Gehrke (2013)
• MGNREGA participants increase the share of inputs allocated to more
profitable crops, especially to cotton, shift to high value, but riskier crops.
• Hari and Raghunathan (2014)
• Analyse this with district level data. Find similar results.
• Varshney, et al, (2013)
• District level data on agricultural cropping patterns to compare
partial implementation (2004/5 and 2007/8), with those with full
implementation (2007/8 and 2011/12). No consistent evidence of
impacts on cropping patterns. Wage increases, but are not
sustained.
Bhargava (2014, 2015)
• NREGA causes a roughly 20 percentage point shift away from
labor-intensive technologies towards labor-saving ones, particularly
for small farmers and low-powered technologies.

5. Review of literature: Environment
• IISc Study (Rapid scientific measures) 2011, 2013
• reduced the vulnerability of agricultural production, water resources and
livelihoods to uncertain rainfall, water scarcity poor soil fertility.
• 2,000 households in 40 villages in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya
Pradesh and Karnataka documents clear benefits in terms of reduced soil
erosion, increased water availability, groundwater recharge and biomass.
• Agarwal, et. al (2012)
• RoR 2.29-4.09% for Jharkhand wells.
• Narayanan, et. al (2014)
• Survey of over 4100 assets across 100 villages in 20 districts
• 90% of respondents considered the works very useful or somewhat useful;
only 8% felt the works were useless.
• Tata-IWMI studies reported in Verma and Shah (2012)
• best examples of 140 MGNREGA assets in 75 villages in Bihar, Gujarat, Kerala
and Rajasthan suggestsFor a majority of assets, recovery is within a year of
completion of works.
• Additional water /protective irrigation leading to saving of diesel costs
• Pisciculture
• Groundwater recharge

6. Work initiated/ in progress
• Constrained by paucity of good data on agriculture.
• Six ICIRSAT-VDSA villages data pre & post MGNREGA
combined with MGNREGA specific survey to parse some
of these effects
• District level data on agriculture and agricultural census
data to research some of these impacts.
Project paper

7. More information about project
outputs can be found at:
http://www.igidr.ac.in/mgnrega/