Accountability in the Delivery of Guaranteed Employment Through MGNREGA in Rural India

We use the uneven rollout of accountability measures to identify their impact on the provision of guaranteed employment in rural Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, India. A public information campaign combined with an NGO-supported grievance mechanism resulted in treated households working over 10 additional days per year in the program. We find no immediate impact from the information campaign alone. These estimates, based on three rounds of Young Lives survey data, suggest that the combination of accountability measures enhanced the fulfillment of work entitlements. However, our research design cannot disentangle the longer-run effects of the information campaign from the incremental impact of the grievance mechanism. The paper also discusses the implementation of India's workfare program, accountability failures, the design of the interventions, and seasonal variation in program take-up.