Employment Guarantee in Urban India: How Has Rajasthan’s Experiment Fared?

Krishna Priya Choragudi, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

In response to the growing vulnerabilities and lack of social security for informal workers in India, Urban Employment Guarantee programs have been proposed as a potential social security measure. The Rajasthan Government's Indira Gandhi Rozgar Guarantee Yojana (IRGY) was launched in September 2022. Based on the lines of MGNREGA, it guarantees 125 days of wage employment in local public works annually to all urban households in the state. This paper examines the implementation and impact of IRGY using survey data from 400 households in the urban slums of Jaipur and Udaipur, collected before and a year after the program's implementation. The surveys revealed that women, particularly those who are less educated, older, married and engaged in housework, have greater interest and participation in IRGY compared to other working-age adults. The findings indicate that IRGY facilitates women's entry or re-entry into the urban labor force by offering flexible employment close to home and provides a fallback option for those already engaged in informal labor. While IRGY has yet to address several challenges and cannot single-handedly resolve the structural issues of job scarcity or low female labor force participation rates, it holds potential to address specific gender-related concerns in the urban labor market.

Keywords: Gender Dynamics, Human Capital, Education, and Work, Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination, Mixed methods research

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