POVERTY REDUCTION STRATEGY TN

obliged to pay from its own resources an unemployment allowance, at a rate not less
than 1/4 of the scheme wage rate for the first month and 1/2 thereafter - up to the 100
day limit for the household.
Up to end July 2008, total employment provided under NREGA in Tamil Nadu
added to 419.2 lakh person days giving employment to 18.69 lakh households, that is,
22.43 person days per households since the inception of the programme. Among
different groups benefiting from the programme, the largest was that of women whose
share in benefit was to the extent of nearly 75.6 percent. Total fund available for the
programme was Rs.1015.68 crore out of which actual expenditure was only Rs. 338.57
crore. This amounts to only about one-third of the total fund available.
Table 4.13 summarises the implementation of NREGA in Tamil Nadu up to July
2008. It may be noted that the coefficient of correlation between the share of BPL
population in a district in total BPL population of all districts in Tamil Nadu and the share
of cumulative number of days of employment under NREGA in a district in the
corresponding number in all districts (relevant data in Appendix Table 4.9) is extremely
low at 0.26. This may be partly due to the choice of districts in the phasing sequence of
NREGA and partly due to mismatches in incidence of the programme and the incidence of
the poverty according to BPL population.
4.8 Intra-district Imbalances: Selected Districts
As part of the overall poverty reducing strategy plan (PRSP), it will be useful to examine
the strategy for preparing District level PRSP taking some of the relatively backward
districts in Tamil Nadu as case studies. One district is discussed here, viz.,
Thiruvannamalai. Similar details for Sivagangai are given in Annexure 4.3.
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