A field study of job cards, work demanded and wages paid in one panchayat, analysed with SPSS
Mapped to your syllabusBangalore University / BCU MSW CBCS · SWHCP-4.5 (BU) / CPD-4.5 (BCU) Project Work: Dissertation / Case Study · Semester 4This dissertation studies how one gram panchayat actually experiences the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) — India's flagship rights-based scheme that guarantees up to 100 days of unskilled wage employment per rural household each financial year. On paper every rural household has a legal entitlement: a job card, work on demand within 15 days, work within 5 km, wages paid through the account within 15 days, and an unemployment allowance when the state fails. In practice, awareness of these provisions and the actual experience of getting work and wages vary sharply from village to village.
The study asks three linked questions in one gram panchayat of Tumakuru district, Karnataka: How much do job-card households know about their entitlements? How many actually obtained work in the last financial year, and for how many days? How smooth was wage delivery — mode of payment, delays, deductions and grievances? Data come from a household survey using a structured interview schedule administered in Kannada, a verification of job-card entries against the panchayat's records, and two focus group discussions — one with workers and one with elected members and panchayat staff.
Analysis is done in IBM SPSS Statistics — frequencies and percentages for the profile, cross-tabulations for awareness and participation, and chi-square tests for the association between household characteristics and MGNREGA use. The dissertation closes with suggestions for the gram panchayat and the taluk-level extension officer, grounded in what workers themselves reported. It is an individual, field-work-based community-development dissertation for MSW Semester 4 (CPD-4.5 / SWHCP-4.5).
Syllabus alignment
MGNREGA promises work on demand and wages within 15 days, yet many rural households either do not know the procedural rights that make the guarantee enforceable — written application for work, dated receipt, unemployment allowance — or find that the experience on the ground does not match the entitlement: work arrives late or in short bursts, wages credited to accounts take longer than the Act allows, and grievances die in the gap between the worker, the gram panchayat and the taluk office. Where awareness is low, demand falls, and low demand is then read as absence of need.
Panchayat-level evidence on this gap is thin because most studies analyse district or state aggregates, which hide village-level variation. There is a need for a household-level study in one gram panchayat that measures awareness of entitlements, actual participation in the last financial year and the wage-delivery experience together — using the job card as a verifiable record rather than relying only on recall — so that the findings can translate into concrete suggestions for the panchayat, the taluk extension officer and community-level social work practice.
MGNREGA turns employment into a legal right, but a right is only as strong as the household's ability to claim it. This dissertation examines awareness, participation and wage delivery under MGNREGA in one gram panchayat of Tumakuru district, Karnataka, using a household survey (n = 120 job-card households), job-card verification and focus group discussions, analysed with SPSS.
Enacted in 2005, MGNREGA guarantees up to 100 days of unskilled wage employment per rural household on demand, with work offered within 15 days of application and wages paid within 15 days of the muster roll closing. Karnataka implements the scheme through the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department, with gram panchayats maintaining job cards, planning works and running muster rolls, and wages routed directly to workers' bank accounts. For landless and small-farm households the scheme is a floor under rural incomes, a lever for women's workforce participation and a buffer in drought years.
National and state-level evaluations — parliamentary committee reports, CAG performance audits and academic studies — repeatedly flag the same pattern: uneven awareness of the right to demand work, under-utilisation of the 100-day ceiling, delays in wage payment after the shift to account-credit systems, and weak grievance redressal. Most published Indian studies are district- or state-level analyses of MIS data. Gap: fewer micro-level studies measure awareness, participation and wage-delivery experience together, in the same households, in a single panchayat after the direct-benefit-transfer reforms — which is exactly the level at which a social worker can act.
A descriptive cross-sectional survey of 120 job-card households selected systematically from the panchayat's job-card register, supplemented by verification of job-card entries and two focus group discussions (workers; elected members and panchayat staff). The interview schedule covers household profile, awareness of entitlements (how to apply for work, wage rates, unemployment allowance, worksite facilities), participation in the last financial year (days worked, types of works, seasonality) and wage-delivery experience (payment mode, delays, deductions, grievances and social audit exposure).
In scope
Out of scope
A descriptive cross-sectional household survey with a document-verification component and two focus group discussions. The unit of analysis is the job-card-holding household; the respondent is the cardholder or the household member most involved in MGNREGA work.
| Tool | Content |
|---|---|
| Part A — household profile | size, social category, landholding, occupation, education, gender of cardholder |
| Part B — awareness (10 items) | how to apply for work, dated receipt, wage rate, unemployment allowance, worksite facilities, social audit |
| Part C — participation (8 items) | days worked last FY, month-wise pattern, type of works, reason for fewer days |
| Part D — wage delivery (8 items) | payment mode, days from muster close to credit, deductions, grievance experience |
| Job-card checklist | entries complete, days and amounts consistent with recall (subsample n = 40) |
| FGD guides | workers' group (8–10); elected members + panchayat staff (6–8) |
Synopsis approved by the guide → permission from the Panchayat Development Officer → pilot of the schedule on 10 households (excluded from the sample) → Kannada interview schedule administered at the household after written consent → job-card verification with permission → FGDs in weeks 11–12 → SPSS analysis → report.
| Weeks | Activity |
|---|---|
| 1–3 | Literature review, finalising objectives and schedule |
| 4–5 | Kannada translation, pilot, permissions |
| 6–12 | Household survey (120), job-card verification (40) |
| 11–12 | Two FGDs, transcription and translation |
| 13–16 | SPSS coding, analysis, tables |
| 17–20 | Report writing, suggestion follow-up, submission preparation |
Frequencies and percentages for all Parts; mean days worked and mean delay in wage credit with standard deviations; cross-tabulations of awareness score (high/low) and participation (≥ 30 days / < 30 days / nil) against social category, landholding, gender and education with chi-square tests (significance at p < 0.05); FGD transcripts analysed thematically to explain the survey pattern.
The study design moves from entitlements defined by the Act to household-level experience, and back to suggestions the panchayat can implement. The flowchart below is the study-design diagram for the Methodology chapter.
flowchart TD
A["MGNREGA entitlements: 100 days, work on demand, wages in 15 days"] --> B["Synopsis, objectives, hypotheses"]
B --> C["Permissions: guide, IEC, PDO"]
C --> D["Pilot schedule, n = 10 households"]
D --> E["Systematic sample of 120 job-card households"]
E --> F["Interview schedule A-D in Kannada"]
E --> G["Job-card verification, subsample n = 40"]
E --> H["FGD 1: workers"]
E --> I["FGD 2: elected members and staff"]
F --> J["SPSS: frequencies, percentages, means"]
G --> J
J --> K["Chi-square: awareness and participation by household profile"]
H --> L["Thematic analysis of transcripts"]
I --> L
K --> M["Triangulation: survey + records + FGDs"]
L --> M
M --> N["Findings and suggestions to gram panchayat and community practice"]Entitlement theory reads MGNREGA as a set of legal guarantees; awareness converts a guarantee into a claim, worksite and payment systems convert a claim into income, and social audit is the feedback loop that corrects both. The design therefore measures awareness (input side), participation (use side) and wage delivery (delivery side) as three linked layers rather than one composite score.
Each household is identified only by a study code; the sheet linking codes to addresses stays with the student. Recall data (Parts C and D) are checked against job-card entries for the 40-household subsample; disagreement beyond a stated tolerance is resolved in favour of the card record and reported as a finding about recall quality, not silently corrected. FGD quotes are anonymised before translation.
Package 01
Part B of the interview schedule measures knowledge of ten procedural entitlements: written application for work, dated receipt, wage rate, unemployment allowance, 5-km rule, worksite drinking water, shade, first aid, child care and social audit. Scored as one point per correct item and grouped high/low for cross-tabulation.
Package 02
Part C reconstructs each household's MGNREGA year: days applied for, days worked, month-wise distribution, types of works (roads, tanks, plantation), and reasons for falling short of demand — work refused, no work within 15 days, seasonality, migration or preference for other labour.
Package 03
Part D documents how wages actually reach workers: payment mode, days from muster-roll closure to account credit, deductions, wrong-credit incidents and how they were resolved, plus awareness and use of the grievance process (helpline, written complaint, social audit forum).
Package 04
For a 40-household subsample, the checklist compares job-card entries (dates, days, amounts) with household recall and with muster-roll information the panchayat shares, yielding a consistency measure that separates recording problems from recall problems.
Package 05
Two FGDs — one with workers and one with elected members and panchayat staff — explain the quantitative pattern: why demand dips in peak agricultural months, what happens when payments delay, and how grievances actually move. Thematic analysis feeds the discussion chapter.
Package 06
Coding manual, data entry with double-checking of 20% of forms, SPSS analysis (frequencies, means, cross-tabs, chi-square), APA-style tables, and a findings chapter that converts results into concrete suggestions for the panchayat and for community social work practice.
Slide 1
Awareness, Participation and Wage Delivery under MGNREGA
Slide 2
Why MGNREGA, Why a Single Panchayat
Slide 3
Statement of the Problem
Slide 4
Objectives
Slide 5
Research Methodology
Slide 6
Tools and Data Sources
Slide 7
Analysis Plan (SPSS)
Slide 8
Ethical Framework
Slide 9
Key Findings (fill after analysis)
Slide 10
Suggestions
Slide 11
Limitations
Slide 12
Conclusion
Bullets, speaker notes and the .pptx · ₹999
Read each answer, close it, and say it in your own words. Your viva will ask. Now you'll know.
It guarantees up to 100 days of unskilled wage employment per rural household per financial year, on demand, with work offered within 15 days, wages paid within 15 days of the muster roll closing, and an unemployment allowance when work is not provided. It is rights-based because the household can legally demand work and seek compensation when the state fails, rather than waiting for a scheme to reach it.
The research question is: how do job-card households in one gram panchayat of Tumakuru district experience MGNREGA in terms of awareness, participation and wage delivery? I hypothesised that awareness of entitlements is significantly associated with the household's social category and education, and that participation of 30 days or more is associated with the gender of the cardholder and landholding size.
The objectives are descriptive and associational — measuring how widespread awareness and participation are in one panchayat at a point in time. A case study would give depth on few households but no prevalence, and an intervention would need months of access and control that a semester does not allow. The survey plus verification plus FGDs gives prevalence, consistency and explanation together.
+11 more questions, with answers
Unlocks with the project · ₹999
Unlock for ₹999What to change before it goes anywhere near a submission. Skipping it is how the demo fails live.
Unlocks with the project · ₹999
Unlock for ₹999How to study it, adapt it and walk your examiner through it, step by step.
Unlocks with the project · ₹999
Unlock for ₹999OnlyProjects. (2026). Awareness, Participation and Wage Delivery under MGNREGA in a Gram Panchayat of Tumakuru District (SPSS): MSW Community Development project bundle [Educational resource]. https://onlyprojects.online/projects/msw-community-mgnrega-job-cards-wage-delivery-gram-panchayat
Keep browsing
Same degree, same syllabus slot, different idea. Pick the one your guide will actually approve.
Family & Child Welfare
A follow-up dissertation tracing what happened after the file was closed — restoration, education and re-referral, analysed in SPSS
Medical & Psychiatric SW
An MSW dissertation at a Bengaluru psychiatric OPD using BAS, Brief COPE, MSPSS and DASS-21
HR & Labour Welfare
An MSW HR dissertation using UWES-9, TIS-6 and a statutory welfare checklist to guide retention