Rahul Maganti

Sharmila Joshi

Editor

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Tatta
Lakshmi and Pothada Lakshmi are at a loss. The government has transferred the
wages owed to T. Lakshmi to P. Lakshmi’s bank account – and Pothada Lakshmi’s
money has gone to Tatta Lakshmi’s account at the State Bank of India in Munagapaka mandal of
Andhra Pradesh.

So T.
Lakshmi is still waiting to be paid roughly Rs. 16,000, and P. Lakshmi awaits
around Rs. 9,000. Both women are Dalit, both have no land, and both work as MGNREGA
workers – T. Lakshmi in Munagapaka village and P. Lakshmi in Ganaparthi village of the
same mandal.

During
2016-2017, T. Lakshmi worked for 95 days on projects under the Mahatma Gandhi National
Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). She has not received her wages (which too are not calculated for the full 95 days by field assistants) because the government has insisted, starting from April 2015, that workers
must link their Aadhaar cards to their MGNREGA job cards.

“Because of the error
of the computer operator in Munagapaka mandal while digitalising the 18 digit job
card number and 12 digit Aadhaar number, the payment I was supposed to get [for
now, around half  of the total owed to
her] was transferred to a P. Lakshmi from Ganaparthi village,” she says.

“But neither of us could withdraw the [other person’s]
money at least for temporary use because our bank accounts are also linked to
Aadhaar and the job cards,” she adds. Lakshmi, 34, earns a daily wage of around
Rs. 150-200 as an agricultural labourer when work is available in the fields,
and a daily wage of Rs. 203 on MGNREGA sites when that work is possible in her
village in Visakhapatnam
district.  

Nearly
700 MGNREGA workers in Munagapaka – a village with a population of around 10,000 – are collectively
waiting for Rs. 10 lakhs in wages since April 2015. And 294 labourers of
Ganaparthi, a village with  a population of around 2,200,
are yet to receive more than Rs. 4 lakhs. These estimates have been compiled by
the villagers and local activists with data collected from RTI (Right to
Information) applications, MGNREGA field assistants and from the postal
department&#39;s portal.Across
the 20 panchayats of the mandal, payments of as much as Rs. 1 crore are
yet to be made to 6,000 labourers – 12 of these panchayats still get them
through the postal department, and in eight, after 2015, the payments are supposed
to be credited into bank accounts.




















“I have to walk one and a half kilometre and back only to hear the
bank officials ask me to come back again the next day,” says T. Lakshmi, who has
been to the bank numerous times hoping to get her money, sometimes losing out
on her day’s agricultural wages. Till March 2016, her payment was disbursed by
the post office, where she had managed to successfully match her data with her
Aadhaar biometrics. Her problems started when the payments were transferred to
the bank. “They keep saying that there is some
‘technical problem’ but don’t explain what that is.” So Lakshmi – her husband
is also a daily wage labourer with intermittent work – depends on her son, who
works with an apparel company in Atchutapuram mandal, where he earns Rs. 6,000 a month.

The
computer operator of Munagapaka mandal, Bablu, who digitises records, also cites
‘technical problems’ for the workers’ Aadhaar numbers not being linked to their
MGNREGA cards. He tells me he doesn’t know what these problems are and asks me
to contact the State Bank of India’s Munagapaka branch. The bank officials ask
me to contact the computer operator. 

The
government’s records state that the Aadhaar numbers and job cards of 14,070
labourers in Visakhapatnam district are yet to be linked – and of a total of
174,755 across Andhra Pradesh (till January 2018).  

At the
Munagapaka
mandal’s post offices, the problems with fingerprinting are
rampant. “The post office keeps sending us back saying
our finger prints [which the post office records when a  worker goes to collect wages] do not match
with the ones they have in their [Aadhaar] database,” says Nookaraju, who works
on MGNREGA sites in Ganaparthi. He is waiting to be paid long-pending dues of
Rs. 22,000. “We are the sons of the soil and we soil our hands every day working
with our hands. The prime minister talks of Aadhaar and digitisation as a
solution to all the problems in the country, but in reality this has taken food
away from our mouth.”

Adding to the delays due to the technical glitches, fingerprint
mismatches and erroneous linking is a severe shortage of funds. The central government is reportedly supposed
to have released Rs. 1,972 crores for Andhra Pradesh to pay for the work
generated since April 2015,  but released
only Rs. 420 crores in November 2017. Many argue that this is a consequence of the  political tussles between the Bharatiya Janata
Party at the centre and the Telugu Desam Party in the state. 

“The law [MGNREGA
Act, 2005] mandates that the payments must be made in less than 14 days after
completing the work, or the workers must be paid compensation [25 percent above
the wages owed for delays from 14-21 days, and 50 per cent for delays over 22
days],” says Balu Gadi, an activist with the Andhra Pradesh Vyavasaya
Vrutthidarulu (Agriculture and Allied Occupations) Union. “So every worker in
this mandal
is eligible for compensation. Not a single person has got it. They are in fact still
waiting for their actual wages.” 
















Balu’s
mother Chinatalli, 50, is also an MGNREGA labourer who worked for 100 days in
the financial year 2017-2018. “When I ask for more work days, the officials
tell me that a household will only get a maximum of 100 days of work. But the
law states that a household should get a minimum of 100 days of work. They use every
opportunity to deny us work and payment,” says Chinatalli. She is yet to be
paid Rs. 12,000 that has piled up as wages since April 2016. The
officials I spoke to say this is because her Aadhaar number is not linked to her
job card and bank account.

In the
mess of digitisation and delays, not many labourers speak of their right to a
minimum of 100 days work because they are busy sorting out their payment problems
for work already done. The average workdays generated per household for the 2017-18
financial year so far was 59 for Munagapaka mandal. For Andhra Pradesh as a whole, the
number is 47 workdays. 

On these days, T.
Lakshmi, P. Lakshmi, Nookaraju and Chinatalli, along with other MGNREGA workers,
have constructed feeder canals, dug ponds, cleared shrubs, and done other land
development works. But they have been unable to 
hammer through the unrelenting wall of Aadhaar.

Aadhaar robs Lakshmi of wealth

ലക്ഷ്‌മിയുടെ സ്വത്ത്‌ ആധാർ കവർന്നെടുത്തു

ಲಕ್ಷ್ಮಿಯ ಸಂಪಾದನೆಯನ್ನು ಲೂಟಿ ಮಾಡಿದ ಆಧಾರ್

லஷ்மியின் செல்வத்தை கொள்ளையடிக்கும் ஆதார் அட்டை

ଲକ୍ଷ୍ମୀଙ୍କ ଠାରୁ ଧନ ଛଡେଇ ନେଲା ଆଧାର

आधारने लांबवली लक्ष्मीची लक्ष्मी

आधार ने लूटी लक्ष्मी की कमाई

آدھار نے لکشمی کا پیسہ لوٹ لیا

আধার চুরি করেছে লক্ষ্মীর টাকা

Munagapaka

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Aadhaar robs Lakshmi of wealth

Unable to access hard earned-wages, MGNREGA workers in AP's Visakhapatnam district are learning that even bearing the name of the Goddess of Wealth doesn't save you from Aadhaar's many mess-ups

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