The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Program is among the world’s largest employment generation programs. But it is also among the world’s largest water security programs, investing some US$ 3 billion annually in constructing, repairing, renovating rural water structures, public and private. One persistent concern is that even if the Program enhances incomes and livelihoods of the poor, the water structures it creates or improves may be neither useful nor productive nor durable. This Highlight synthesizes over 140 case studies of MGNREGA water structures that were useful, productive and durable. It then teases out 8 lessons which, if internalized in program administration, can enhance its ‘strike rate’ in delivering useful, productive and durable rural water infrastructure besides, of course, providing wage employment to the needy.
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