Around 70 per cent of the Indian population is living in rural areas. People in rural areas should have same QOL as is enjoyed by people living in sub-urban and urban areas. Furthermore, the cascading effects of poverty, unemployment, poor and inadequate infrastructure in rural areas on urban centres is leading to socio-economic tensions manifesting in economic deprivation and urban poverty. Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is considered as a “Silver Bullet” for eradicating rural poverty and unemployment, by way of generating demand for productive labour force in Indian villages. It provides an alternative source of livelihood which will have an impact on reducing migration, restricting child labour, alleviating poverty, and making villages self- sustaining through productive assets creation such as road construction, cleaning up of water tanks, soil and water conservation work, etc. For which it has been considered as the largest anti-poverty programme in the world. Since the scheme is going to be in place for an undefined period of time, and is being enlarged in terms of scope and geographical coverage, there are many challenges like non- homogeneity in its effectiveness, region specific disparities and outcomes etc. It is exactly due to this reason; few NGOs have already done some surveys. However, they are very much confined to one or two districts, and more importantly cantered on systemic defects, rather than probing the impact of their programmes on beneficiaries. There is a necessity to carry out an in- depth review of these rural development programmes with two different strategies i.e., (i) All India studies by capturing signals from all corners of the country, taking into account all the regions, and (ii) comprehensive coverage of all the objectives and clauses preserved in the MGNREGA in a broad manner. Thus, there is also a need to critically examine the implementation process of this programme and its impact on livelihood of the rural people. It can be concluded that the success of this Act depends upon its proper implementation and in this scenario, the community participation is very important to make this programme more effective.