It has been observed at several instances that pavement performance is greatly affected by the USAge of poor quality of soil subgrade which causes severe damage and distress. With the growing tendency to utilize marginal soils, there arises the need to understand the fundamental behavior of the materials in order to make suitable amendments in design parameters, especially in the subgrade construction of pavements. This paper presents the shear strength behavior of geotextile reinforced marginal soil without and with cement modification and compares its performance with that of conventional soil subgrade (gravel). The cement modified reinforced marginal soil has shown significant improvement in shear strength parameters both under un-drained and drained conditions. Further, the study revealed that the cement modified marginal soil has become non-plastic with its performance close to that of gravel subgrade. The mechanisms of geotextile reinforced soil in mobilizing the shear strength parameters are observed to be relevant even for cement modified marginal soil.