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Megan Sheahan
Megan Sheahan is a consultant at Industrial Economics, Inc.. Prior to this she was a Research Support Specialist at Cornell University. Her current research focuses on modern input use in sub-Saharan Africa, index-based livestock insurance in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia, the employment guarantee scheme in India, and fertiliser profitability in Ethiopia. She holds an M.S. in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University where her Master's thesis explored the profitability and use of inorganic fertiliser in Kenya using household-level panel data she helped to collect. Megan also holds a B.A. in Economics and International Relations from Boston University. Megan has also worked as a consultant for various organisations and, prior to her graduate studies, full time at the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) and Chemonics International.
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Politics and MNREGA: A limited Link in Andhra Pradesh
The Ministry of Rural Development claims that MNREGA needs to be changed in order to reduce politics and corruption in the scheme. One of the studies cited by the Ministry is an analysis of the extent of political manipulation of MNREGA funds in Andhra Pradesh. In this column, the authors of the study assert that while politics may influence programme expenditure in some places and to a small extent, this is not universally true and does not undermine the effective targeting and good work of the scheme at large.
From the top to the bottom of MNREGA
MNREGA – the world’s largest public works programme - is intended to be demand-driven and has local implementation at its core. In this note, Megan Sheahan, Research Support Specialist at Cornell University, shares her experience of visiting MNREGA work sites in some of the most deprived communities in Andhra Pradesh. She finds that while the scheme has enabled a jump in earnings and created useful assets for villagers, beneficiaries have little control over the timing or type of work allocated to them.