Socio-Economic Analysis of Effectiveness of Implementation of an Employment Guarantee Scheme at Local Level: A Study of a Village in India

The main purpose of the study is to develop theoretical and practical principles for analyzing the economic efficiency of the program to guarantee employment in rural areas in India. This program of support and active promotion of employment of the rural population is the result of the adoption of the Law on Guarantees of Employment in Rural Areas. The relevance of the choice of this scientific problem is that most scientific papers focus on assessing the effectiveness of the implementation of this legal act at the macro level, while the article analyzes this issue at the level of a particular locality. The object of the study was the village of Sanatpur in Uttar Pradesh, India. The study conducted a survey of participants in the program to guarantee employment in this rural area, which served as a basis for primary data, as well as used official statistics on the implementation of this program in the country. Descriptive statistics methods were used to analyze the effectiveness of the program to guarantee employment in rural areas. The article analyzes the mechanism of implementation of the program to guarantee employment in rural areas, namely the peculiarities of job creation in rural areas, the formation of wage policy, as well as the payment of wages to local residents. The field study identified key difficulties in implementing the above program: insufficient awareness of villagers about the opportunities and benefits of participating in the approved employment support program, as well as low access to basic financial services and lack of almost 70% of the rural population individual bank accounts. The results of the study can be useful for local and national governments in the field of social protection and social security.