History Since 1960, 30 years were expended in struggling to find suitable employment schemes in India's vast rural hinterland. The experiences of these decades provided important lessons to the government. These included the 'Rural Manpower Programme' which exposed the tribulations of financial management, the 'Crash Scheme for Rural Employment' on planning for outcomes, a 'Pilot Intensive Rural Employment Programme' of labour-intensive works, the 'Drought Prone Area Programme' of integrated rural development, 'Marginal Farmers and Agricultural Labourers Scheme' of rural economic development, the ‘Food for Work Programme’ (FWP) of holistic development and better coordination with the states, the ‘National Rural Employment Programme’ (NREP) of community development, and the ‘Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme’ (RLEGP) of focus on landless households. The Planning Commission later approved the scheme and it was adopted on national scale. In April 1989, to converge employment generation, infrastructure development and food security in rural areas, the government integrated NREP and RLEGP into a new scheme Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY). The most significant change was the decentralization of implementation by involving the local people through local village governments or Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) and hence a decreasing role of bureaucracy. In October 1993, the Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS) was initiated to provide employment to agricultural hands during the lean agricultural season. The role of PRIs was reinforced with the local self-government at the district level called the 'Zilla Parishad' as the main implementing authority. Later, EAS was merged with Sampoorna Gramin Rojgar Yojana (SGRY) in 2001. On 1 April 1999, the JRY was revamped and renamed to Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana (JGSY) with a similar objective. The role of PRIs was further reinforced with the local self-government at the village level called the ‘Village Panchayats’ as the sole implementing authority. In 2001, it was merged with SGRY. On 25 September 2001 to converge employment generation, infrastructure development and food security in rural areas, the government integrated EAS and JGSY into a new scheme SGRY. The role of PRIs was retained with the 'Village Panchayats' as the sole implementing authority. Due to implementation issues, it was merged with NREGA in 2006. In January 2001, the government introduced a FWP similar to the one that was initiated in 1977. Once NREGA was enacted, the two were merged in 2006. The total government allocation to these precursors of NREGA had been about three-quarters of . Employment generation programmes created after 2005 include