It is a key safety net in times of economic, agrarian distress and provides women with an income but the low wages and hard labour make it a last resort.
Even as the rural employment programme provides low wages, it is a source of income and opportunity for women who have few other avenues of work in rural India and face barriers in migrating out of the village for work
In the first part of the latest edition of our Women at Work series, we write how anecdotal evidence and data from the latest Periodic Labour Force Survey indicate that economic distress is driving women to take on any sort of work at very low salaries