Resource information
Public knowledge about India's
ambitious Employment Guarantee Scheme is low in one of
India's poorest states, Bihar, where participation is
also unusually low. Is the solution simply to tell people
their rights? Or does their lack of knowledge reflect deeper
problems of poor people's agency and an unresponsive
supply side? This paper reports on an information campaign
that was designed and implemented in the form of an
entertaining movie to inform people of their rights under
the scheme. In randomly-assigned villages, the movie brought
significant gains in knowledge and more positive perceptions
about the impact of the scheme. But objectively measured
employment showed no gain on average, suggesting that the
movie created a "groupthink," changing social
perceptions about the scheme but not individual efficacy in
accessing it. The paper concludes that awareness generation
needs to go hand-in-hand with supply-side changes.
