india s national rural employment guarantee act nrega links a national level social security programme with local governments to successfully scale up employmentintensive infrastructure creation and maintenance as a mechanism for social protection and employment generation see also section of this report since negra s has benefited fortyfive million households who have contributed in excess of billion days of labour world bank national poverty alleviation programmes such as these have held a dualpurpose in labour intensive approaches for both temporary crisis relief and longterm poverty reduction