Abstract

It is increasingly argued that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) introduced during 2006 has escalated the wage rate of agricultural labourers in different states. But, not many studies are available as to what happened to the wage rate of male and female agricultural labourers after its introduction covering the districts of Tamil Nadu. An attempt is made in this study to answer this by using data during 2001-02 to 2012-13. The growth analysis reveals that the pace of increase in real wage rate for male and female labourers is substantially higher during post-MGNREGS period as compared to pre-MGNREGS period across the districts. The results of simple regression suggests that the irrigation development and employment days per household provided by MGNREGS appeared to have positively fuelled the growth rate of wage for male labourers, while foodgrains productivity, cropped area per farm labourer, rainfall and employment days provided by MGNREGS appeared to have fuelled the growth of female wage rate.

Keywords: Wage rate, Irrigation, MGNREGS, Rural employment, Tamil Nadu