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Muthyalu gave a background of the importance of NREGA in Ananthapur.
Ananthapur is the second most drought prone district in India. In the last 10 yrs there have been 4 droughts. People have had to sell their livestock and migrate. The migration didn't work out for many people - they had to sell tools, provisions and live in bad conditions in the city. When the men left to find work the family members dependent on them were also in dire straits. There are cases when money didn't reach/didn't reach in time when people have had to beg for food.
Muthyalu's village is Mushtikovila. It has a population of 3000 and it is distributed among 4 habitations. There are 1500 laborers. With the launch of NREGA in Feb 2006, there was a hope that not only can people get wages for their living, but also that they can develop the natural resources in the area.
The village has 9000 acres of revenue waste land and 4000 acres of agricultural land. With increase in wild boars, people stopped agriculture since they would come and dig out your produce. When the scheme was launched, the government organized many training programs, for people and officials who were to be involved. Muthyalu gave 50-70 trainings on NREGA. In Sep 2006, he became the Sarpanch. The campaigning, etc happened in 15 days and he observed that about 75% of people were planning to migrate. Soon after he got elected, there was a social audit in Ananthapur about how NREGA was being conducted. This happened in his village as well. At the end of the week, there was a meeting in Ananthpur (Apparently the reason for the social audit was for the government to prove that the NREGA was not working well so they could scrap it.) After the social audit, he organized a meeting to talk about why there was migration despite there being a seemingly good program like the NREGA. People raised some issues that
What is necessary for such schemes to work is transparency on the side of the government and awareness on the side of people. So if both these conditions are satisfied, the programs can work. When he asked people to get their job cards he found that they hadn't been given the actual job cards - they had just got the outer covers. The cards were sitting in the Panchayat Secretary's office.
They then made an application for the work and submitted it. They wanted a receipt for this but the officials did not want to give it. The village folks stuck to their point that they wanted a receipt. They got estimates for the work. The people also did not believe that the Sarpanch would do any work. Some 200 people showed interest, but only 50 showed up to do the work. They worked for a week and stopped work saying they were getting only Rs 30/day while in the neighboring village, they were getting Rs 50/day. The wages here were min of Rs 80 usually with a cap of Rs 100. |
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They prepared the muster roll and asked for a technical assistant to take measurements. Only once that is done are payments made. They said they could come only after 15 days. He approached the MPDO (Mandal Parishad Division Officer) but that didn't work. Then they went to the Project Officer (PO) and the Project Director (PD). The PD called the EGS director for the entire state. This worked and the next day measurements were taken. Payments were made quite promptly and people got Rs 250/day. They held a meeting with the labor to transparently discuss what they got paid, etc. Then more folks wanted to work. Then he motivated local youth to help facilitate the program. They helped with filling out applications etc. The payments came quite soon - an average of Rs 150-200/day. They again held a meeting to discuss how many hours of work they had put in, how much money they received. This gave them some confidence that the scheme was working ok. Most of the work was restricted to the largest of the 4 habitations, Mushtikovila. He wanted to extend the work on include other habitations as well.
He got government officials involved in the scheme. Payments for a work of Rs 5 lakhs took over a month to come. He walked out of meeting saying he wouldn't attend any more till payments were made. With the youth he had motivated, the day to day mechanics of the program was getting taken care of. He was trying to understand how the process would work more efficiently. He briefly talked about the various levels of bureaucracy involved in NREGA- the field asst is front line person. After work is done, field asst checks but technical asst also needs to check, so both have to be around. Next is PO. Another gap is possible there. Then the pay order goes to the MPDO, then to accountant to write the checks. Then to MPDO to sign the checks. Then to post office. There are gaps between each of these stages. His role has been in seeing that all these things move faster.
When he took over, Rs 25,000 had been disbursed under NREGA (they ranked 14th in the mandal). Since he became Sarpanch, 27 lakhs has been disbursed. So far, 26,000 labor days were generated from April 2006 - Dec 2007. The avg wage was Rs 91. Avg days per household was 54.There are still 3 months left for the year to end, so he wants to get to the 100 days that NREGA guarantees.
Here is a list of the kinds of work they have done through NREGA:
Earlier there was Swarna jayanthi scheme which is not there anymore. After Congress government came, there is no money with Sarpanch. Under food for work, people stole a lot of money. NREGA was difficult to misuse since it is linked with the post office.
The story sounds good but there is a big difference between working as a development worker and as a Sarpanch. A lot of people in the village are strongly behind him. At the same time, when someone is making some efforts to develop the village, there are people who want to drag it down. The ex-Sarpanch is against him. There were complaints on grievance day. He organized a gram sabha where these complaints would be discussed. The complaints were read out and people whose signatures were there spoke up and said they did not know what they were signing for.
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