Nioshi Shah 

Sharmila Joshi

Editor

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“Many
times, when I am the last to leave, around 2 in the afternoon, I take the
muster roll and run. I don’t take a breath until I reach home. We keep looking
back to see if someone is there. But even though we are afraid, we don’t have a
choice. We have to go. We need the money,” Champa Rawat says.

Walking briskly, constantly adjusting her
ghoonghat
to cover her face, Champa is telling me how projects under the MGNREGA function
in Thana village. She points to a plot of land with irrigation trenches, around
a kilometre from her village, and says, “This was our work site. But this time
[in April 2019], we were given a site four kilometres away and more isolated
than this one.” It takes her an hour to walk to the site, an hour back.<a></a> Champa’s is an account of the benefits as well as the weaknesses
of the landmark central government scheme under the Mahatma Gandhi
National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (<a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/library/resource/the-mahatma-gandhi-national-rural-employment-guarantee-act-2005/">MGNREGA</a>) of 2005. The scheme aims to provide 100 days of wage work in
a year to rural households in India. In Bhilwara district of Rajasthan – where Champa’s
village Thana is located in
Mandal taluka
– the scheme has provided 862,133 households with much-needed wage work in 2019 (April-September). And, since 2013, it has provided work to a total of nearly 6 million households in Bhilwara.

The
wages help sustain many families, including Meena Salvi’s, who at 19 is the
sole earning member, looking after ailing parents. Meena too though speaks of
the problems of working at isolated sites. “I am afraid because I have to walk
back alone, especially if I am the last one working,” she says.

In
May, the 25 labourers, all women, on Champa’s site stopped work in protest
against being allotted a site so far away. They were worried that if they
agreed to go to this isolated site, the panchayat will assign them one even further
away the next time. “There are other sites nearby that need work,” says Champa. “There is no way
to reach other than from the jungle in between. Sometimes there are wild
animals there, sometimes drunk men…” says Savita Rawat, who works at the same
site.  But after a week of protest, labourers who were in urgent
need of money returned to work. A few continued with Champa and were assigned
another site after a month.

Champa,
30, has been an MGNREGA ‘mate’ (worksite supervisor) since January 2019. She
started working on sites under the scheme in January 2015. A mate as well as a labourer receive the same wages – in Rajasthan,
Rs. 199 a day. The
mate, the <a href="https://nrega.nic.in/Circular_Archive/archive/nrega_doc_FAQs.pdf">rules</a> state, should “preferably be an
educated woman worker who
should have worked for at least 50 days as a worker in MGNREGS in the previous/
current financial year.”

The
work allows Champa some independence. “My husband’s family doesn&#39;t like me
going out and working,” she says. “They say I have enough work in the house. In
NREGA, I only spend four hours a day, from 10 to 2 at the site. This way I can
take care of house work too.”

On a shelf in Champa’s one-room cement
house in Thana, a placard next to a photograph of her says:  ‘Nominee for Thana Gram Panchayat’s Sarpanch –
Champa Devi (BA, B.Ed)’.  “In 2015, I
stood for the sarpanch’s
position…I even tried to apply for a job at the anganwadi [in 2016],” she says. In
the same room, there is a sewing machine in a corner – dusty and covered with an
old cloth. “I used to do tailoring,” Champa says. “Village women would get
their cloth to me, and I would stay up all night to sew their garments. I
earned 4,000 rupees every month. But after my mother-in-law died three years
ago, my husband forced me to stop tailoring, saying I must have time for all the house
work.”

The
restrictions imposed by her husband meant that Champa was left only with the
option of MGNREGA work. &quot;He doesn’t stay here and now he says do
as you like as long as I also take care of domestic work.&quot; Champa’s husband,
30-year-old Hukkam Rawat, works as a taxi driver in Gujarat. He earns around
Rs. 10,000 a month and returns to the village once every two months when he
leaves some money for Champa and their two sons, 12-year-old Lavi and
seven-year-old Jigar.

Champa
approaches her work, the only option she now has, very seriously. As a mate, her
duties include marking the labourers’ attendance in the muster roll, measuring
the trenches built and ensuring they complete their allotted tasks. The mate’s
duties, she says, also include “keeping an eye out for whether labourers are
getting their full wages and following up with the gram panchayat to [try and] resolve any discrepancies in the
wages given.” Champa says she has tried to ensure that every labourer on her
site receives the full daily wage for completing the allotted work. “Earlier,
labourers would barely receive 50-60 rupees per day. The rate is decided by the
panchayat.
No one can question it….”

So
Champa often tells the labourers – all women – at her site: “It is your right
to know what’s written in the muster roll. You should check, if there is a
cross against your name, it means the mate has not given you attendance, even
if you were present. If the mate, the panchayat,
or any authority is defrauding you, it’s your right to find out.”

Champa
also talks about facilities mandated by this scheme. “They say they will
provide tents and medical aid, but we haven’t seen any yet. When labourers get
hurt, women  tear their dupattas and
tie it around the wound. Indravati [a labourer on her site] almost fainted
once. A tool pierced her foot… We had no medical aid. This
kit of medical aid, inch tape and calculator, I got it from the panchayat.  I asked them so many
times, they finally gave it to me…”

Her attempts to streamline the MGNREGA
work system in her village of
1,172 people, she says, has brought her threats from some in Thana. “They are
trying to establish their power in the village,&quot; she says.

Power
operates at other levels too in the village and, therefore, on its MGNREGA
sites.<a></a> Champa, who belongs to the Rawat caste, listed as an OBC in
Rajasthan, says, “Women who belong to ‘lower’ castes get their own
bottles from home because they’re not allowed to touch the matki
[earthen pot] or drink the same water. If I am of the same caste as the
women on water duty, I can touch the matki and drink water from it. But Bhils (a Scheduled Tribe in
Rajasthan), for example, can’t.”

On
approaching a site just before noon, where Gita Khatik has just finished her
work for the day, Champa sits on the ground, under the shade of a tree. An
exhausted Gita drops her spade and slowly sits down next to Champa.  Taking a sip from a plastic bottle, 40-year-old
Gita, who belongs to the Khatik
community, a  Scheduled Caste
says, “The upper caste labourers here
discriminate against those of lower castes, especially against Dalits. They
don’t let women of lower castes fill water for everyone. I’ve never been put on
water duty, because I belong to a lower caste.”

In
a while, on her way back home, Champa says,
“If the government makes an effort to look at the conditions [of MGNREGA
workers] and increases the rate, people will be able to fill their stomachs at
least. The government spends so much money everywhere, why can’t it spend some
on its labourers?”

A
little after noon, Champa arrives back home and and calls for her children.
Unlocking the door, she says, “I haven’t received my income as mate [for five
months when I met her in May]. They [some of the panchayat members] say they
won’t let it pass, they don’t want me to be mate. So I
say, it’s okay even if you don’t let it [the money] pass for five years….&quot;

Cautiously
lifting the ghoonghat
as she steps back into her house, in a much louder voice now, she says “The government
should make different NREGA sites for men. If men are around, we are not
allowed to remove our ghoonghats even while working. We can’t talk
with our ghoonghats on. We can’t even see clearly… If there are only
women on the site, we don’t follow these rules… we talk, we laugh, we
understand each other’s problems...”

Manoeuvring through MGNREGA in Bhilwara

பில்வாராவில் மகாத்மா காந்தி தேசிய ஊரக வேலை வாய்ப்பு உறுதி சட்டத்தின் (MGNREGA) மூலம் நடைபெறும் சூழ்ச்சிகள்

भिलवारात मनरेगाची बिकट वाट

ଭିଲ୍‌ୱାରାରେ ଏମ୍‌ଜିଏନ୍‌ଆର୍‌ଇଜିଏ ମାଧ୍ୟମରେ ପରିଚାଳନା

Thana

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Manoeuvring through MGNREGA in Bhilwara

Champa Rawat, an MGNREGA supervisor from Rajasthan’s Thana village, speaks of how the work gives her autonomy and wages, despite isolated sites, no facilities, irregular payments, and gender and caste bias

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