108 Omkar JOshi, sOnalde desai, reeve vanneman and amaresh dubey Review of Development & Change, Vol. XXII No.1, Jan-June 2017, pp. 108-137 Omkar Joshi is a Doctoral Student, Department of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park. Email: ojoshi@terpmail.umd.edu; Sonalde Desai is a Professor of Sociology at University of Maryland, College Park, and Senior Fellow, National Council of Applied Economic Research; Reeve Vanneman is a Professor of Sociology at University of Maryland, College Park; Amaresh Dubey is a Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Who Participates in MGNREGA? Analyses from Longitudinal Data Omkar Joshi, Sonalde Desai, Reeve Vanneman and Amaresh Dubey ABSTRACT The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was enacted in 2005 and has completed a little over a decade in India. It is the largest public employment programme in the world and has promoted a wider participation from rural households across the country. This paper examines the issue of programme participation in MGNREGA holistically by looking at household and individual-level participation and controlling for regional heterogeneity, using a unique panel data from the nationally representative India Human Development Survey. Using a binary logistic model and fxed effects models at the state and village level, the paper fnds that poor households with a low asset base and those belonging to the Scheduled Caste (SC)/Scheduled Tribe (ST) categories are more likely to participate in the programme, but the support base of MGNREGA is not just limited to these groups and is rather broad-based. It also shows that as compared to other types of work, women suffer less disadvantage than men, thereby providing empowerment opportunities to women. Keywords: MGNREGA; programme participation; public works programme; social safety net