Everybody has a Wish List

The national rural employment guarantee scheme has raised expectations dramatically

This sleepy village in the Anantpur parliamentary constituency of Andhra Pradesh was put on India’s political map by UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It was at Bandlapalli, back in February 2006, that the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) was kicked off.

Very little has been the same in these parts since. In the last three years, families with NREGS job cards have prospered and been able to buy themselves cellphones, two-wheelers and the like. Their quality of life has clearly risen, and that too, without even having to move to a city. An estimated 50 families that would otherwise have migrated to Bangalore for jobs over the past year have decided to stay put.

“We used to travel in search of jobs at construction sites. Though we used to earn well, our fields were neglected back home and problems like loans taken at high interest rates always haunted us. Ever since NREGS was introduced here, we have been able to get at least a 100 days’ job guarantee right here, and look after our fields as well. I am proud to say I have no loans now,” says Adappa, 37 showing off his NREGS job card.

According to Bandlapalli’s Sarpanch Rami Reddy, villagers have understood the scheme well enough to claim their legislated due. “They can demand a minimum 100 work days per year when they are relatively free. Since we have programmes running almost round the year, they can find some job or the other. The rest of the days, they tend to their fields, go to the towns and look for ways to raise their savings. They also get paid anything between Rs 80 and Rs 100 per day, much more than the Rs 40-50 they used to get earlier working in others’ fields.”

It is no secret that the Centre’s job guarantee scheme has pushed up minimum wages in the dry regions of Anantpur, where a majority of the people are landless labour.

NREGS’ field assistant L Shiva Reddy has ready statistics to spout from a clutch of computer printouts he carries around with him. He can slice and dice the numbers any which way you like. “In 2006-07, when the scheme was launched,” he reels out the data, “715 families registered, in which 1,406 individuals were employed. On an average, they worked for 50.86 man-days per person, as total employment of 8,189 days were provided. Twenty-two families completed 100 days employment that year.” All very impressive, as it looks and sounds. By the records, the last three years has seen a steady increase in the number of man-days. The number of job card holders reaching 100 days of employment per year has risen too.

While such statistics are a government employee’s delight, the actual work on the ground doesn’t look too bad either. Projects taken up under NREGS have steadily increased from year to year. “We sanctioned public works worth over Rs 1 crore every year, which helped those under the scheme earn anywhere between Rs 8,000 and Rs 12,000 per year,” reports Reddy. These rural projects included the building of farm ponds, stone bunds and earthen bunds, as also clearing bushes, developing unused land and carving out drains or irrigation channels.

Not that everyone in the village is equally pleased. In fact, there is plenty of grumbling. Some villagers complain that the programme’s benefits have not reached the deserving. “This is a Congress-orchestrated programme favouring only their well-wishers and supporters. There are scores who have been left out in this very village where NREGS was launched,” fumes Venkatanarayanamma, whose husband was allegedly killed by his own relatives, all card-carrying Congress members, in this village 17 years ago while she was carrying her first child. It has been a long time, but the scars of the family feud have not healed. “We have brought out a pamphlet on the misuse of NREGS. You know, after Sonia and the PM came here for the launch, in the subsequent Zilla Panchayat polls, the Congress lost and the TDP came to power. That shows people are not happy that the scheme is being used to fill the pockets of local leaders here,” she alleges.

Bandlapalli is as faction-ridden as any village in India can get, and the closely fought political space is anything but harmonious. Yet, there are clear signs that labourers as a group, made up mostly of scheduled castes, backward and other backward classes, are thankful for the employment and income now being generated locally. “We can sleep peacefully and have our two square meals without bothering where the next meal would come from,” says Nadipu Narasimhareddy, a job card holder for the past three years.

“The quality of life has definitely improved. Most sport cellphones and have two-wheelers and television sets at home. They have even improved their housing board colony houses,” reports Shiva Reddy.

Elsewhere, there is a plaque at a village school building that pledges NREGS to the nation. In the harsh glare of the sun, a frail old man keeps watch over a tank that has been built in front of the school. “The tank is always full of water and is used by people going up and down to their fields further away,” says Pedappa, proudly, as he shoos away cattle thirsty for a sip.

A few kilometres away from the village, near the foot of the bare hillocks that surround Bandlapalli, locals are busy working on a couple of recently initiated NREGS projects. One of these is a land levelling project which will be added to the local land bank, while the other is a stone bund wall being constructed to keep away wild animals that come down the hills to raid the groundnut fields.

“These are small projects. This election, we are asking for a canal drain to keep the papaya, banana and groundnut fields from flooding. Every rainy season, water comes gushing down the mountains and logs the field. If a drain is built, this water can be channelled to the lake,” says Bhaskar Reddy. There are other demands being voiced too. “We will vote only if village development issues are taken up,” says Nalla Narasappudu, another resident who has a wish list of borewells, roads and bus links to reel off.

Though some of the demands have a distinct pie-in-the-sky quality to them, the villagers of Bandlapalli are rather realistic at least about one thing: no matter who comes to power at the Centre this time round, the government dare not ignore the NREGS. It has taken rural expectations to another plane altogether.

AnantpurelectionNREGAwages