WASHINGTON: India's rural
employment guarantee programme MNREGA has been ranked as the world's largest
public works programme, providing social security net to almost 15 per cent of
the country's population, World Bank has said.
India is among the five
middle-income countries running the world's largest social safety net
programmes, said a World Bank Group's report 'The State of Social Safety Nets
2015'.
"The world's five
largest social safety net programmes are all in middle-income countries (China,
India, South Africa and Ethiopia) and reach over 526 million people," it
added.
The combined spending on
social safety nets in 120 developing countries amounted to about USD 329
billion between 2010 and 2014, it said.
India's Mid-day meal scheme
has been classified as biggest school feeding programme benefiting 105 million
beneficiaries.
The top honours for public
works programme went to MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment
Gurantee Act) with 182 million beneficiaries or 15 per cent of India's
population.
The World Bank ranked the
Janani Suraksha Yojna with 78 million beneficiaries as the top-most social
security programme with conditional cash transfers.
Also, it ranked the Indira
Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme as the second-largest unconditional cash
transfer social security progamme in the world.
"The World Bank Group
and the ILO share a vision of social protection for all, a world where anyone
who needs social protection can access it at any time," said Jim Yong Kim,
World Bank Group President and Guy Ryder, Executive Director, ILO, in their
joint statement.
The Group's Senior Director
for Social Protection and Labor Arup Banerji said more countries at all income
levels are investing in social safety net programs because they are
transformational.
"There is strong body
of evidence that these programmes ensure poor families can invest in the health
and education of their children, improve their productivity, and cope with
shocks," he said.
The report further stressed
on the need to improve the efficiency of social safety net programmes by
strengthening countries' capacity to target, integrate, administer, and
evaluate social protection programmes, such as social and beneficiary
registries.
Well-designed programs are
cost-effective, costing countries only between 1.5 per cent and 1.9 per cent of
GDP - far less than most government spending on fuel subsidies.
//copy//Source : The Economic Times
