Data Organization as Structure for Collaborative Governance: The Case of Implementation of Employment Guarantee Legislation in Rural India

Abstract

NREGA is an employment guarantee legislation promulgated for the rural workers of India. It provides 100 days of employment in a year with a provision of unemployment allowance by implementing agencies. To monitor the legislation, a collaborative platform has been developed that is customized to the requirement of the multiple stakeholders (e.g., different governments, village bodies, beneficiaries, public, work engineers, etc.). A large amount of the data is generated on the platform. Despite this, it takes lot of time in complaint redressal and mostly it is done manually. The chapter attempts to explore ideas of how the collaborative platform could be made more effective by organizing the data such that the requirement of field-based variability can be minimized.