Abstract
The wages to the MGNREGA workers are only to be paid through their accounts in bank and post offices. It ensures the various financial services provided by the banks and post offices are to be accessed by the poor villages, improve transparency, reduce fraudulent practices and induct the poorest of poor to the formal banking channel which enable them to access various financial services through the process of financial inclusion. Financial inclusion plays a pivotal role in empowerment of poor, underprivileged and deprived worker their financial condition and standard of living. Odisha is having a low rank in financial inclusion struggling for improvement in this area. The role played by MGNREGA to help the state in this respect has been analyzed in this study. The study also analyzed two culturally and economically divergent districts of western Odisha Sambalpur and Balangir. It studied the various aspects of effect MGNREGA in the financial inclusion process in these districts.
Keywords: Financial inclusion, Transparency, MGNREGA, Wages, Improvement.