The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (2005) differs from the other poverty alleviation measures in two significant respects. Where most welfare programmes cast the state in the role of benefactor offering handouts to the poor, the NREGS is built around notions of citizenship and entitlement. Secondly, the NREGS also facilitates disclosure by means of regular social audits. These audits, mandated to be done by the Gram Sabhas, are intended to...
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Diary of Digging Dirt
Why would a politician turn cheerleader for those trying to dig dirt against the men and women who form the final but vital link in his political supply chain - the Sarpanches or village heads? Perhaps to show his commitment to the government program he owes his job to. This month, Bhilwara in Rajasthan saw something best described as 'social service' meets 'crack investigation': around 1500 people voluntarily gathered and...
More »Social and political dividends from NREGA by Vidya Subrahmaniam
In the final analysis, what makes any NREGA social audit worth all the pain and effort is the awareness it creates among poor beneficiaries. It is a measure of the hard labour that awaits NREGA activists in other States that a social audit conducted under blazing arc lights, and with so much official support, such as the one in Bhilwara in Rajasthan, could run into so many roadblocks. Virtually all...
More »The sorry plight of Khara tribals in M.P. by Mahim Pratap Singh
REWA: Having struggled for the past five years for their land, mine workers of Khara village in Madhya Pradesh still do not know what they are fighting against—a feudal social system, a corrupt Forest Department, or their own fate? Khara village is a typical example of how feudal forces with tacit approval from the local administration still call the shots in most of rural India.Three years of drought and a barren,...
More »NREGA audit: Bhilwara shows the way by Vidya Subrahmaniam
The Bhilwara social audit team repeatedly came up against resistance. Yet the coming together of civil society and government in Rajasthan augurs well for the future of NREGA. For watchers of India’s grassroots democracy, the place to be in recently was Bhilwara in Rajasthan; the town and the countryside were decked out in carnival colours for an audit exercise that saw thousands come together — social rights activists led by...
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