Deepening knowledge of MGNREGS’ contribution to climate resilience: a study of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh

This working paper explores the extent to which India’s largest social protection programme – the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) – helped households prepare, cope and recover from the 2018 summer drought across Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, India. As well as providing baseline information on the climate information services accessed by MGNREGS households and officials, it offers practical guidelines for how the scheme can use climate information in its decisions and planning (pp. 42-43):

1. Deepening understanding of the types of climate information services (CIS) that would be useful for both MGNREGS officials and workers to support decision making on wages and assets;
2. Working with the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) and the remote sensing departments to improve access to climate information and useability for different types of decision making;
3. Strengthening technical capacity to understand different types of climate information;
4. Choosing equitable modes of communication targeted to the needs of different users;
5. Strengthening households’ ability to meaningfully participate in decision making.