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NREGA recently renamed as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGREGA), is one of the largest rights-based social protection initiatives in the world. NREGA is the first ever law, internationally, that guarantees wage employment at an unprecedented scale. The programme has also initiated the worlds largest financial inclusion measure for providing poor people access to the formal banking system. NREGA is therefore different from the earlier government employment schemes,since it treats employment as a right and is intended to be demand driven. Since its inception the programme has benefited over 10 crore households and it is being recognized that NREGA has the potential to transform rural economic and social relations at many levels. Thus it is very relevant to study the socio-economic impacts of MGREGA on different sections of rural population.

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