By Aman Kayal, Academic Content Writer of Economics
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005. It promises 100 days of guaranteed wage employment to all rural households who volunteer to do unskilled manual work. The scheme based on this Act is one of the many measures the government has implemented to generate employment for those who are in need of jobs in rural areas. Since Independence, the Union and State governments have played an important role in generating employment or creating opportunities for employment generation. Their efforts can be broadly categorised into two — direct and indirect. In the first category, as you have seen in the preceding section, the government employs people in various departments for administrative purposes. It also runs industries, hotels and transport companies, and hence, provides employment directly to workers. When the output of goods and services from government enterprises increases, then private enterprises which receive raw materials from government enterprises will also raise their output and hence increase the number of employment opportunities in the economy. For example, when a government owned steel company increases its output, it will result in direct increase in employment in that government company. Simultaneously, private companies, which purchase steel from it, will also increase their output and thus employment. This is the indirect generation of employment opportunities by the government initiatives in the economy.