Vol. 11, Special Issue 9 (2022)

Author(s):
Maheshwari KD and Bheemappa A

Abstract:
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) launched in February 2006 is perhaps the largest and most ambitious social security and public works programme in the world. MGNREGA with its inter-sectoral approach opens up opportunities for convergence with different programmes. The aim of convergence is to optimise public investments made under existing schemes through suggested ways of linking and steering them towards a common/ shared recipient end, both physical (area, infrastructure, natural resource) and human (person, group, agency).The convergence initiative is considered as a positive step towards sustainable rural development in many different ways. But, lack of convergence amongst relevant government departments and functionaries being heard among various states. Keeping this in view, an attempt has been made to develop a scale for measuring the perception of implementers towards convergence mechanism established under MGNREGA by using “Summated Rating Scaling Technique” developed by Rensis Likert (1932). For the identified 78 statements under seven components viz., Concept and special features (13), Objectives and specific advantages (21), Inclusion of ICT technologies (6), Stakeholders linkage and involvement (6), Resource pooling (8), Institutional arrangements (7), Stages of MGNREGA convergence mechanism (17) relevancy test was performed which resulted in 58 statements. Finally 38 statements were retained for measuring the perception towards convergence mechanism of MGNREGA.