MGNREGS, the premier centrally-sponsored national rural livelihood scheme, is one of the most elaborately designed and implemented public workfare programmes in India. While a large number of studies have analysed the progress of employment creation under the scheme, very few have looked into the equally important issue of rural asset creation under the scheme. The scheme is centrally sponsored and the broad guidelines are centrally designed, yet the interpretation and implementation of the scheme is subject to wide regional variation owing to variations in local level governance capacity, governance structure and regional political economy