India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) employs about 50 million men and women every year and offers an important opportunity for in-vestigating the link between public works spending and the politi-cal allocation of funds. First of all, MGNREGS is derived from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which grants citizens the “right to work” on local in-frastructure projects at a set minimum wage.