Empowerment of Women through MGNREGA in Nadia District of West Bengal

Mr. Bhajan Chandra Barman

doi:https://doi.org/10.17492/pragati.v5i2.14380

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Empowerment of Women through MGNREGA in Nadia District of West Bengal

Bhajan Chandra Barman

Vol 5, Issue 2, July - December 2018 | Pages: 117-126 | Research Paper

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https://doi.org/10.17492/pragati.v5i2.14380

Published Online: November 25, 2018

Author Details ( * ) denotes Corresponding author

1. * Bhajan Chandra Barman, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Netaji Nagar College, Kolkata, West Bengal, India (bhajanbarman@gmail.com)

The basic objective of this study is to explain the impact of MGNREGA on women empowerment in the study area. The present study is based on primary data collected from 200 women of Santipur block in Nadia district, West Bengal during 2017-18. For measuring women empowerment, a Cumulative Empowerment Index (CEI) has been constructed. Three-point scale has been used to calculate of each indicator. In this study, possible score value of CEI is varied from 0–16where 0 indicates the lowest level of economic empowerment and 16indicatesthe highest level of economic empowerment. The analysis of the study shows that the level of women empowerment in the study area was not satisfactory because the majority (95.2%) of the studied women belonged to low to medium level of economic empowerment and only 5% of them belonged to a high empowerment level. Thus, it can be concluded that MGNREGA has affected women empowerment but it is not as high as expect from the scheme.

Keywords

MGNREGA; Women empowerment; Underemployment; Poverty; Job card

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