* Jharkhand.Blog * <http://www.jharkhand.org.in/blog>
Naxalites do not oppose NREGA
*Sometime in the middle of the night, the widower got up, stole past his
four sleeping children, and hung himself from a nearby berry tree with his
late wife's sari. *
*Fighting crushing poverty in his Gitildi village in Jharkhand, 40-year-old
Turiya Munda killed himself last month because he had not been paid his
wages for months under the ambitious rural employment guarantee scheme - the
world's largest social security programme.*
* *
*Munda had worked for 48 days digging a pond a kilometre away. He kept
waiting for months for his money - Rs 3,360 - then gave up, becoming a
tragic milestone - the first NREGA death.*
* *
*The state government has recommended action against local officials. When
government officials sleep on their jobs across one third of India, they
often love to blame the militants.*
* *
*True enough, Gitildi village is in the militant heartland where squads of
rebels have come by often, asking villagers to support them. But Munda gave
up his life (see adjoining story) because of officials' sloth, not Naxalites
- the rebels are not creating roadblocks for the implementation of the rural
jobs law here, or elsewhere.*
* *
*In another part of the state, a group of villagers stood in the sun in
Dundu village with some eloquent proof of that: pieces of blank paper. The
villagers were digging to build a pond in the insurgency-wracked Latehar
district, under the rural jobs law that guarantees 100 days of employment
each year.*
* *
*The blank papers were job cards - the equivalent of a bank passbook. They
showed how villagers had not got a single day of employment last year, even
though Naxalites have allowed the project to run unhindered.*
* *
*In some areas of Jharkhand, local Naxal units even put up posters urging
villagers to claim their right to employment. "The Naxalites do not oppose
NREGA. They ask us to work and demand employment," said Ram Avtar Singh, a
50-year-old Dundu villager, as he set aside his spade and fetched his blank
job card from his home across the road. "If the officer at the district
headquarters says that 'I cannot do this because the Naxal will shoot me',
then that is just a good excuse for not doing their work."*
* *
*It is a crisis of governance that resonates in tens of thousands of
villages across insurgency-affected India, the very villages where sincere
implementation of the jobs law is perhaps needed the most. One-third of the
country - at least 200 of the 600-plus districts from Jammu and Kashmir to
the Naxalite-affected dozen-odd states or the northeast - is currently under
the shadow of armed movements.*
* *
*Government officials in New Delhi as well as the states often say that that
is the reason why the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has
not reached a huge section of people in areas like these. Dundu village lies
in the Matlong region, a medley of steeplechase-like mud roads flanked on
all sides by hills.*
**
*The SUV rolls past quiet villages, where men and women watch the strangers.
No outsider comes to these parts any more. So when NREGA was announced in
2005, it seemed like the godsend that would lift the villagers from crushing
poverty. *
* *
*"We are desperate for employment. If we got work here, in our village, are
we mad to go to the cities for work?" said Daroga Singh, standing outside
his home in Dundu. Villagers wondered whether Naxalites would attack those
taking part in NREGA programmes. But the rebels also wanted to know more
about the law.*
* *
*"They came to me one night and I was asked to explain the detailed
provisions of the NREGA - then sought my help in preparing a write-up on it.
I think they also made some posters locally and put them up, asking people
to take part in it and seek work," said a local NGO official in a district
near Latehar.*
* *
*He declined to be named, citing fears of police action. In Dundu, platoons
of Naxalites, both men and women wearing green uniforms and carrying guns,
frequently walk down the mud road next to the pond project.*
* *
*They watch the pond building project with curiosity, but the villagers know
that this is one government project that is not at risk. "When their squads
passed by this road some days ago, they asked me: 'are you getting your
wages?' I said 'no'," said Ram Avtar Singh. "They said 'You must take your
wages, it is your right'."*
* *
*Insurgents do not oppose the ground-breaking NREGA because it touches the
everyday lives of the poorest - and targeting it could mean a popular
backlash.*
* *
*However, this comes for a cost - they are known to take levies or taxes
from NREGA projects running in their areas. But villagers say this is no
reason why people should not get employment. "The Maoists take five per cent
levy here, we know that. The government official takes much bigger cuts.
Both do it," said Peshkar Singh, standing in the shade of a tree as others
looked on.*
* *
*By the end of January, one member each in 29 lakh families in Jharkhand had
job cards - but out of these, only 13.5 lakh had demanded employment from
the government, Jharkhand's NREGA Commissioner Amitabh Kaushal said. Even
going by the government's figures, it was unclear why 15 lakh families in
the state living in abject poverty would not demand employment guaranteed to
them.*
* *
*A central government official monitoring NREGA projects said Jharkhand's
estimates were under a shadow of doubt. "According to their figures,
everyone who demanded a job got it within 15 days.*
* *
*But that is not turning out to be true," said the official, declining to be
named. "The record keeping in Jharkhand is abysmal - and it suits them."*
*Officials never inspect records on the ground in Naxal areas, and the
unusual visitors are also interrupted in their interviews with a phone call
as they approach the edge of the dense forest that holds Naxal hideouts.*
* *
*"You have come too deep - so far so good," a voice says in a phone call to
HT's Latehar reporter. "Please turn back with your guests.".*
*(With Vishal Sharma in Latehar)*
* *
*(This story first appeared in the Hindustan Times on March 22)*
*Neelesh Misra ([EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>)
* *
**
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