IMPACT OF RURAL EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE SCHEMES ON SEASONAL LABOUR MARKETS: OPTIMUM COMPENSATION AND WORKERS’ WELFARE

The policy of employment guarantee scheme (EGS) is well known since the 1817 Poor Employment Act and the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act in Great Britain (Blaug, 1963, 1964) and the New Deal programs of the 1930s in the United States (Kesselman, 1978; Bernstein, 1970), and it was considered an important element of relief policies during natural disasters and economic downturns. In recent past, these kinds of schemes were followed both in developed and developing countries with multiple objectives such as poverty reduction building and maintaining public infrastructure, improving bargaining power of the workers etc. Among others, some notable examples of such schemes mainly for poverty alleviation are as followed by Chile (1987), India (1978), Pakistan (1992), Bangladesh (1983), Philippines (1990), Botswana (1960) and Kenya (1992).