The impact of National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in Wayanad District of Kerala State in India.
The district of Wayanad is mainly agriculture oriented. The farmers cultivate Black pepper, Coffee, Areca nut, Rice etc .. all of these are labor intensive cultivations. The number of people indulging in agricultural activities are decreasing in the past years due to bad weather, fall in prices and the risk involved. The implementation of NREGA has opened the flood gates of disaster in agricultural sector.
The implementation of this scheme has resulted in acute shortage of workforce in agricultural related activities. Under this scheme the labor force is being used in non productive fields such as road cleaning, leveling of roads, culvert building etc. Before the implementation of the scheme all these workers were indulged in productive agricultural activities.
Now due to this scheme the agricultural works are in a crippled state. Everybody is going for the %u201CPanchayath Work%u201D . Nobody is available for agricultural works done in the fields of Paddy, Pepper, Coffee, Areca nut etc. As a result the productive agricultural field of Wayanad is dying very fast.
There are a lot of farmers having just two or three acres of land. They are cultivating various crops there by using the local laborers. These farmers are not big landlords or they have no other income source. They depend on the small scale farming activities to earn their livelihood. Now with the impl
