The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) which was renamed as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in 2009 is a flagship employment guarantee programme of the Government of India (GoI). Implemented by the GoI in the year 2005-06, this programme is considered as a game changer in the realm of Indian development practice because of it’s rights based approach and comprehensive geographical and social coverage. It has been a year short to a decade that this programme is in operation and has undergone a number of administrative and other changes including new additions with respect to it’s cardinal features of administration, operation, scope of work and class of beneficiaries. Assam has been implementing the scheme from the 1st phase of it’s implementation. Undertaking the matching methodology- Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Difference in Difference (D-in-D) methods, this paper analyses the impact of MGNREGA on two of the very important dimensions of development i.e. employment and social capital formation. It’s findings clearly support the positive impact of MGNREGA on these two variables and find them to be critical too. It also in a simple way validates MGNREGA’s implicit claim to be regarded as novel development practice based on the contemporary concept of development (i.e. sustainable development) and approach (i.e. capability approach) to development.
