Jawahar rozgar yojana, panchayats, and the rural poor in India
Raghav Gaiha; Kaushik, P.D.; Vani Kulkarni
Asian Survey 38(10): 928-949
1998
ISSN/ISBN: 0004-4687 DOI: 10.2307/2645644Document Number: 530563
The paper uses data from the Indian Ministry of Rural Development's Concurrent Evaluation of the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY, the country's largest rural public works programme, launched in 1989) to assess JRY targeting. It also examines the extent to which unsatisfactory targeting is a reflection of the weak and ineffective functioning of the gram panchayats that have direct responsibility for implementing the scheme. Such aspects of panchayats as their representativeness, financial autonomy, and accountability provide a general sense of the panchayats' strengths and limitations. Such information is provided by a small field survey of panchayats, district and village officials and households in three districts of Uttar Pradesh . Data for the evaluation were gathered during 1992 from 4 406 gram panchayats in 886 blocks of 448 districts across India.