Factual Achievement of MGNREGA Calls for an Optimal Planning Using Fuzzy Logic

Abstract

The enactment of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005 has provided an instrument to address the challenges of unemployment and poverty in rural India. The programme has been very effective to deliver the social safety-net to the households subjected to joblessness in major part of the year and it helps to create village assets that can stimulate the natural resource base for rural livelihood. But the scope of implementation of the Schemes in the Districts cannot be similar due to Block level spatial differences in terms of level of development, resource potentials, physiographic set-up, infrastructure, and demography. However, the schemes suffered from poor management with lack of innovative ideas. In this chapter, a Multi-criteria Decision Making Optimization Model is structured to maximize the use of Job card holders, subject to minimum required fund with maximum asset creation, and tested its viability in ‘Jhargram’ Community Development Block of Paschim Medinipur District in West Bengal. The state-of-art planning tools with fuzzy logic can be incorporated in the model to consider the social barrier, tolerance on seasonal variance, spatial change of cost of materials used, and so on. The results reveal that using only three times more fund, five times more assets could have been generated in a year if the implementation follows the schemes referred in the output of the model. The result also indicates the significant increase of average engagement of Job card holders.