SHAME IN KARNATAKA
(This is a 4-day report I filed for Vijay Times, Bangalore on NREGS, after touring Raichur in Karnataka. Raichur is one of the poorest regions in the world and makes a telling contrast with Bangalore, which is also in Karnataka. The inputs of many individuals and organisations have gone into this report. But the report reflects what I saw, learnt and tried to analyse.)
Day one
M A ARUN in Raichur
On the 9th of this month (September, 06) Karnataka almost found its own Tiananmen square in Ameengada village of Raichur district. About 35 women who had not been given work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) stormed to the work site and sat before the tractors. They said they would not budge till they were also given work.
They made two demands: Either give work or run the tractor over and end their misery. Eye witnesses say for many desperate villagers of Ameengada who were irritated at the stalling of the work, the second demand was more tempting to meet. But peace was negotiated and work was called off for the day.
The next day the women found work; but on the 11th when this correspondent met them, 20 women were again out of work. Despite the controversy Ameengada stays as Raichur's model NREGA village where work is on at a furious pace.
But for most other villages of Raichur ruined by a catastrophic drought NREGMS has only lent a touch of irony. Panchayats there are awash with funds that have come under the employment guarantee scheme. But due to the absence of political leadership and a sloppy administration the bulk of this money continues to rot in local banks earning interest, instead of creating jobs.
Ravindra Nayak, the 25-year-old president of Gunja Halli panchayat says he received Rs 3 lakh in May and Rs 7 lakh in August. 'Of the 10 lakhs not a single paisa has been spent," he says. The Nagadadinni panchayat has got Rs 7 lakh. Of this, Rs 35,000 has been spent.
NREGA stipulates the government to provide 100 days of labour in a year to at least one member of each poor family. Under the scheme Raichur got Rs 21 crore in April but has been able to spend only Rs 4.5 crore in the last five months. While the district administration struggles to implement the programme, demand for jobs have soared from the people as all other job opportunities have evaporated with the drought.
In July work started in Yaragara village. According to estimates between 700 and 800 people descended on the work site on one single day seeking work. The turnout -- many times more than originally expected -- blew up the fuse of local officials. Unable to cope with the large numbers the panchayat secretary and engineer stopped work after four days. The panchayat now does not even know who came and worked for how many days and is unable to pay the wages, though the Act requires it to settle dues in 14 days.
The government may default on wages, but it is not an issue with people hungry for work. In Raghunathana Halli work started in August, went on for five days but was stopped abruptly by a junior engineer who said there was some problem with the payment. People are yet to get their wages but they want the work to continue. "Let the government pay whenever it can. But if it can at least resume work, it will put confidence in shop-keepers here to give us credit," says Kariyappa, 55.
Desperation is the other face of drought and this is the coin in regular circulation in Raichur. Every year this coin goes up for a toss in the district. Head it rains and people hang on for the year. Tails, like this year, is drought and time for huge numbers of Raichur's population to move out seeking manual labour in distant places.
In all villages this correspondent visited substantial number of people had moved out in search of jobs. Exodus has begun in most of the villages.
In Raichur people talk about migration like people in Bangalore talk about traffic jams. In Anchana Halli 300 people, in Ganekal 250 people, in Raghunathana Halli 50 people, and in Masida Pura 50 people -- have migrated. Though these numbers are just quick estimates the people of respective villages, accurate figures are also available.
The government school in Ganekal has 245 students. The school headmaster says in normal months 200 students attend school everyday on an average. On 23rd of August 2006 it dropped to 139. A clear sign of migration of families.
Abhay Kumar of Navjeevan Mahila Okkoota says if Raichur has to develop migration has to stop. "If families migrate children lose education. If men go alone, they come back with HIV."
NREGA is an antidote to migration. Though most people don't know it gives them a legal right to employment, many know it has put money in panchayat bank accounts. In Ganekal people said 10 lakhs had come to the bank but nothing was being done to spend it.
The new CEO of the Raichur zilla panchayat Manjunath Prasad, who took charge just two months ago, says the progress in the employment scheme is slow but picking up. If you travel in the direction he points at, towards Bagalkot, you will see signs of activity in villages such as Gonal, Hirehanagi, Atroor and of course, Ameengada.
But if you leave the main road and turn inside the signs stop blinking. Even on the main road in the direction towards Mantralaya progress competes with poverty in Raichur's drought. The district administration claims work is on in all 164 panchayats. But in the 2 villages Gunja Halli panchayat covers -- Gunja Halli and Anchana Halli -- work is yet to start. There is little sign of progress.
Prasad claims that people are returning to villages. "Where the programme has not been effective I am honest enough to admit that people have migrated," he says.
"The problem," says a local activist, "is works have not gone well in 90% of Raichur's villages."
Day 2
To see hunger in rural India, Raichur is the place to go. The district is now past peak summer but it still simmers like a huge solar heater. In villages you can see frail bodies that are being eroded by hunger. And 'jobs scheme' is a topic that draws quick crowds everywhere.
Aanjaneya may be 42 years old, but he is in tears because he is hungry. "I have had only a double-roti since yesterday," he says in a weary voice. He got work for eight days in July under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and is still waiting for wages like other villagers of Yaragara.
People want work, but they don't know they can claim work under NREGS by just applying for it. But to apply they first have to catch the slippery secretary of the local panchayat. Masida Pura and Ganekal villagers said they had not seen their previous secretary for more than two months. They met the new secretary a fortnight ago. Kariappa of Raghunathana Halli says he spoke to his panchayat secretary over phone as it would have cost him Rs 50 to go to Raichur to meet him in person.
"Meeting god will be easier than meeting a secretary," he says.
Even if the villagers succeed to meet the secretary there is no guarantee that he will accept the application. Anchana Halli panchayat secretary told the villagers he will give them work as and when it comes.
The panchayat secretary, the lowest link in the bureaucratic chain, represents the might of the government in rural India. He is the first insurmountable step villagers have to climb while dealing with the government. Frustrated by the inaction of the secretary in giving work people of Raghunathana Halli are planning to take to meet the Deputy Commissioner, who is to Raichur what Supreme Court is to rest of the country.
Nuclear families can get 100 days of work per year under NREGS. But to get work they should have a job card issued by the panchayat secretary. In most villages more than half of the families are yet to get job cards.In Anchana Halli two nuclear families have been listed together thus reducing the number of days of work available for them. There have also been cases where even neighbours' names have been clubbed to appear on one card.
Though NREGA assures work in lots of 15 days in most villages work stretched from two to eight days. Raichur CEO Manjunath Prasad says if the government plans work for 100 people, 200 people turn up and work gets thinly distributed." A new perspective plan has been made with the help of 5 NGOs to identify works that can be taken up to meet the demand for jobs," he says.
In many villages people have completed work but are waiting for banks to open accounts to receive their money. To check corruption and fake entries in muster rolls NREGA requires government to pay people through cheques. But rural banks have neither interest nor infrastructure to open accounts for a large number of people.
The manager at a local bank said the skeletal staff in all rural branches were equipped to handle very low volumes. "Now suddenly if we have to process 50,000 accounts the system crashes," he says.
NREGS calculates wages on amount of work actually done. When the work started in Kautal of Manvi taluk people assumed NREGS was similar to other government schemes where wages are paid just for marking attendence. The panchayat secretary and junior engineer failed to explain this crucial NREGS condition to them.
Amar Pasha, member of Kautal panchayat says after the work was done people counted the number of days they had worked and expected to get Rs 18,000 as wages. But the engineer said based on the actual work done they had earned only Rs 4,000. Irate villagers locked up the engineer and the secretary. Police came and finally the two officials paid the difference from their pocket. This seems to have prompted engineers to call off work in many villages abruptly.
Wages are also delayed by bureaucratic inaction. In Ameengada, Raichur's flagship NREGP village, people are yet to be paid though the work started on August 9. The secretary says the junior engineer delayed giving the Nominal Muster Roll (NMR) book on the basis of which wages are paid.
All workers are given a jobs pass book under NREGS. The supervisor marks attendence in the book which are later added up along with the output to calculate the wages. Ellamma of Navjeevan Mahila Okkoota said in the 60 villages her organisation visited only in three or four villages job pass books had been issued.
To avoid these problems NREGS has a transparency condition that requires all panchayat offices to display vital data about the programme -- works in progress, employment generated, funds spent etc. All panchayats have violated this legal requirement. Manjunath Prasad said implementation on the transparency front was slow but would be speeded up.
day 3
The lifeline of Raichur opens or snaps in June and July of every year. If it rains people raise crops and stay with their families. If it doesn't migration is the only way- out. Anticipating the summer time stress the Central government released funds to implement the project in April all over the country.
Raichur went through an administrative vacuum during this summer. The project director (PD) is the key official in implementing the NREGA programme in the district. In the last five months the district has had as many as four PDs and one of them even held the charge twice.There was no fulltime Zilla Parishad Chief Executive Officer (CEO) -- head of the project -- between February end to July. The Deputy Commissioner held additional charge as CEO and tried but could not give it a push. One of the five taluks did not have an Executive Officer, the crucial second tier-official concerning the project. Of the 164 panchayats, 34 did not have secretaries, so at least some of them had to manage more than one panchayat. When in charge of one panchayat they are elusive, double role make them . When they work in more they are illusory.
A senior officer in Bangalore said this was the story of many backward districts of the state. "Before Amlan Biswas (previous CEO of Raichur who was shifted as Haveri DC) took charge Haveri did not have a DC for six months. Three IAS officers were posted but they refused to serve there. Our CM instead of sleeping in villages should wake up to issues like these..."
Alkod Hanumanthappa, the district-in-charge minister of Raichur said, "it is not that we have been sleeping... I put pressure on the CM, but no officer was willing to come to Raichur."
Manjunath Prasad who finally stepped in two months ago in says staff crunch is a thing of the past. " I identified excess staff in other departments and moved them as panchayat secretaries," he says. But administrative knots remain.
A bill collector in a panchayat in Lingasore taluk said the new secretaries, who have come from other departments, know nothing about their new jobs. "By the time they understand what is happening this year will be over," he said. Two crucial project-related posts at panchayat level, computer operator and technical assistant, have not been filled in majority of the panchayats. These two posts can be useful in expediting the paper work and payment.
If finding staff is difficult, motivating them to work is just impossible. A panchayat secretary in Raichur district said a new programme like this cannot be implemented just through existing officials.
"The job scheme itself involves a lot of work and the CEO has decided to combine a literacy campaign with it. It took me two days to get a shed built for that in a village. Now rest of my month will go in building sheds in other villages," he said.
NREGA empowers the poor by giving them right to work and checks corruption by paying through checks. The local political leaders, typically land owners, who usually collude with bureaucracy to milk programmes, have one more reason to oppose NREGA. It makes labour more expensive for them.
Ravi Kumar Nayak president of Gunja Halli panchayat said as his village had irrigated lands and high employment, there were no takers for jobs under NREGA. But after he left a poor man in his 30s said people wanted work in Gunja Halli also. But as the engineer was asking them to both desilt tank and carry silt to a distance of 200 metres the work was unviable. "If a tractor is brought to carry mud you will see a lot of people turning up for work," he said.
Day 4
With the best of the intentions NREGA has unwittingly turned into a battlefield between the sexes in many villages in Raichur. NREGA stipulates equal pay for both men and women. It also links pay to output. Both these conditions though very progressive have got entangled in complex village dynamics and turned against women.
As mostly earth-work is being taken up under NREGA, men in many villages such as Masarkal have figured they can achieve higher output if they work alone without women.
But in Ameengada, of roughly 200 people working at the tank bed, women are evenly represented. Ellamma of Navjeevan Mahila Okkoota said this was the result of a battle fought hard. In August when the work began she said participation of women was limited. But Okkoota protested and persuaded men to include women, she said.
In the tank desilting work there is a culturally-set division of labour. Men dig earth and women load them to tractors. So an excess of women creates an imbalance and reduces the output. So, in many villages women are asked to come to work with 'male partners' and single women are turned back as 'liabilities'.
This norm goes against widows, deserted women, devadasis and women whose husbands have migrated. These women are also among the poorest individuals in the village; they are near destitutes, and hence need the work most.
Single women seem to be in substantial numbers in Raichur. The scheduled caste colony of Ameengada has about 30 homes. About 10 of them are reportedly single woman-families.
On 11th September many women, unaccopmpanied by men, were reportedly turned back in Ameenagada. Thirty five single women sat before a tractor stalling work and asked why they should fast when work had come for the village, said Ellamma. Though the work resumed the next day, on 13th about 20 of them had still not found jobs.
This correspondent saw four women leaving village on 13th to seek work elsewhere just when tank desilting was in full force in their own village. These women said they preferred government work as wages at Rs 69 were high. The sunflower cutting work they expected to find that day would pay them only Rs 20. But they had no choice as they had gone to the worksite twice and returned without luck.
Opposition has also come from other married women in the village who say single women benefit from the labour of their husbands.
Basalingamma, 35, said it was true that women could not dig earth as equals to men. But she said government should provide work such as earthen bunding and afforestation, which women could handle better.
Women also find it difficult to convince engineers that their output is according to the rulebook. Ellamma says in Navilkal the local engineer has paid Rs 40 to men and Rs 30 to women though both have dug pits of the same size.
Day one
M A ARUN in Raichur
On the 9th of this month (September, 06) Karnataka almost found its own Tiananmen square in Ameengada village of Raichur district. About 35 women who had not been given work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) stormed to the work site and sat before the tractors. They said they would not budge till they were also given work.
They made two demands: Either give work or run the tractor over and end their misery. Eye witnesses say for many desperate villagers of Ameengada who were irritated at the stalling of the work, the second demand was more tempting to meet. But peace was negotiated and work was called off for the day.
The next day the women found work; but on the 11th when this correspondent met them, 20 women were again out of work. Despite the controversy Ameengada stays as Raichur's model NREGA village where work is on at a furious pace.
But for most other villages of Raichur ruined by a catastrophic drought NREGMS has only lent a touch of irony. Panchayats there are awash with funds that have come under the employment guarantee scheme. But due to the absence of political leadership and a sloppy administration the bulk of this money continues to rot in local banks earning interest, instead of creating jobs.
Ravindra Nayak, the 25-year-old president of Gunja Halli panchayat says he received Rs 3 lakh in May and Rs 7 lakh in August. 'Of the 10 lakhs not a single paisa has been spent," he says. The Nagadadinni panchayat has got Rs 7 lakh. Of this, Rs 35,000 has been spent.
NREGA stipulates the government to provide 100 days of labour in a year to at least one member of each poor family. Under the scheme Raichur got Rs 21 crore in April but has been able to spend only Rs 4.5 crore in the last five months. While the district administration struggles to implement the programme, demand for jobs have soared from the people as all other job opportunities have evaporated with the drought.
In July work started in Yaragara village. According to estimates between 700 and 800 people descended on the work site on one single day seeking work. The turnout -- many times more than originally expected -- blew up the fuse of local officials. Unable to cope with the large numbers the panchayat secretary and engineer stopped work after four days. The panchayat now does not even know who came and worked for how many days and is unable to pay the wages, though the Act requires it to settle dues in 14 days.
The government may default on wages, but it is not an issue with people hungry for work. In Raghunathana Halli work started in August, went on for five days but was stopped abruptly by a junior engineer who said there was some problem with the payment. People are yet to get their wages but they want the work to continue. "Let the government pay whenever it can. But if it can at least resume work, it will put confidence in shop-keepers here to give us credit," says Kariyappa, 55.
Desperation is the other face of drought and this is the coin in regular circulation in Raichur. Every year this coin goes up for a toss in the district. Head it rains and people hang on for the year. Tails, like this year, is drought and time for huge numbers of Raichur's population to move out seeking manual labour in distant places.
In all villages this correspondent visited substantial number of people had moved out in search of jobs. Exodus has begun in most of the villages.
In Raichur people talk about migration like people in Bangalore talk about traffic jams. In Anchana Halli 300 people, in Ganekal 250 people, in Raghunathana Halli 50 people, and in Masida Pura 50 people -- have migrated. Though these numbers are just quick estimates the people of respective villages, accurate figures are also available.
The government school in Ganekal has 245 students. The school headmaster says in normal months 200 students attend school everyday on an average. On 23rd of August 2006 it dropped to 139. A clear sign of migration of families.
Abhay Kumar of Navjeevan Mahila Okkoota says if Raichur has to develop migration has to stop. "If families migrate children lose education. If men go alone, they come back with HIV."
NREGA is an antidote to migration. Though most people don't know it gives them a legal right to employment, many know it has put money in panchayat bank accounts. In Ganekal people said 10 lakhs had come to the bank but nothing was being done to spend it.
The new CEO of the Raichur zilla panchayat Manjunath Prasad, who took charge just two months ago, says the progress in the employment scheme is slow but picking up. If you travel in the direction he points at, towards Bagalkot, you will see signs of activity in villages such as Gonal, Hirehanagi, Atroor and of course, Ameengada.
But if you leave the main road and turn inside the signs stop blinking. Even on the main road in the direction towards Mantralaya progress competes with poverty in Raichur's drought. The district administration claims work is on in all 164 panchayats. But in the 2 villages Gunja Halli panchayat covers -- Gunja Halli and Anchana Halli -- work is yet to start. There is little sign of progress.
Prasad claims that people are returning to villages. "Where the programme has not been effective I am honest enough to admit that people have migrated," he says.
"The problem," says a local activist, "is works have not gone well in 90% of Raichur's villages."
Day 2
To see hunger in rural India, Raichur is the place to go. The district is now past peak summer but it still simmers like a huge solar heater. In villages you can see frail bodies that are being eroded by hunger. And 'jobs scheme' is a topic that draws quick crowds everywhere.
Aanjaneya may be 42 years old, but he is in tears because he is hungry. "I have had only a double-roti since yesterday," he says in a weary voice. He got work for eight days in July under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and is still waiting for wages like other villagers of Yaragara.
People want work, but they don't know they can claim work under NREGS by just applying for it. But to apply they first have to catch the slippery secretary of the local panchayat. Masida Pura and Ganekal villagers said they had not seen their previous secretary for more than two months. They met the new secretary a fortnight ago. Kariappa of Raghunathana Halli says he spoke to his panchayat secretary over phone as it would have cost him Rs 50 to go to Raichur to meet him in person.
"Meeting god will be easier than meeting a secretary," he says.
Even if the villagers succeed to meet the secretary there is no guarantee that he will accept the application. Anchana Halli panchayat secretary told the villagers he will give them work as and when it comes.
The panchayat secretary, the lowest link in the bureaucratic chain, represents the might of the government in rural India. He is the first insurmountable step villagers have to climb while dealing with the government. Frustrated by the inaction of the secretary in giving work people of Raghunathana Halli are planning to take to meet the Deputy Commissioner, who is to Raichur what Supreme Court is to rest of the country.
Nuclear families can get 100 days of work per year under NREGS. But to get work they should have a job card issued by the panchayat secretary. In most villages more than half of the families are yet to get job cards.In Anchana Halli two nuclear families have been listed together thus reducing the number of days of work available for them. There have also been cases where even neighbours' names have been clubbed to appear on one card.
Though NREGA assures work in lots of 15 days in most villages work stretched from two to eight days. Raichur CEO Manjunath Prasad says if the government plans work for 100 people, 200 people turn up and work gets thinly distributed." A new perspective plan has been made with the help of 5 NGOs to identify works that can be taken up to meet the demand for jobs," he says.
In many villages people have completed work but are waiting for banks to open accounts to receive their money. To check corruption and fake entries in muster rolls NREGA requires government to pay people through cheques. But rural banks have neither interest nor infrastructure to open accounts for a large number of people.
The manager at a local bank said the skeletal staff in all rural branches were equipped to handle very low volumes. "Now suddenly if we have to process 50,000 accounts the system crashes," he says.
NREGS calculates wages on amount of work actually done. When the work started in Kautal of Manvi taluk people assumed NREGS was similar to other government schemes where wages are paid just for marking attendence. The panchayat secretary and junior engineer failed to explain this crucial NREGS condition to them.
Amar Pasha, member of Kautal panchayat says after the work was done people counted the number of days they had worked and expected to get Rs 18,000 as wages. But the engineer said based on the actual work done they had earned only Rs 4,000. Irate villagers locked up the engineer and the secretary. Police came and finally the two officials paid the difference from their pocket. This seems to have prompted engineers to call off work in many villages abruptly.
Wages are also delayed by bureaucratic inaction. In Ameengada, Raichur's flagship NREGP village, people are yet to be paid though the work started on August 9. The secretary says the junior engineer delayed giving the Nominal Muster Roll (NMR) book on the basis of which wages are paid.
All workers are given a jobs pass book under NREGS. The supervisor marks attendence in the book which are later added up along with the output to calculate the wages. Ellamma of Navjeevan Mahila Okkoota said in the 60 villages her organisation visited only in three or four villages job pass books had been issued.
To avoid these problems NREGS has a transparency condition that requires all panchayat offices to display vital data about the programme -- works in progress, employment generated, funds spent etc. All panchayats have violated this legal requirement. Manjunath Prasad said implementation on the transparency front was slow but would be speeded up.
day 3
The lifeline of Raichur opens or snaps in June and July of every year. If it rains people raise crops and stay with their families. If it doesn't migration is the only way- out. Anticipating the summer time stress the Central government released funds to implement the project in April all over the country.
Raichur went through an administrative vacuum during this summer. The project director (PD) is the key official in implementing the NREGA programme in the district. In the last five months the district has had as many as four PDs and one of them even held the charge twice.There was no fulltime Zilla Parishad Chief Executive Officer (CEO) -- head of the project -- between February end to July. The Deputy Commissioner held additional charge as CEO and tried but could not give it a push. One of the five taluks did not have an Executive Officer, the crucial second tier-official concerning the project. Of the 164 panchayats, 34 did not have secretaries, so at least some of them had to manage more than one panchayat. When in charge of one panchayat they are elusive, double role make them . When they work in more they are illusory.
A senior officer in Bangalore said this was the story of many backward districts of the state. "Before Amlan Biswas (previous CEO of Raichur who was shifted as Haveri DC) took charge Haveri did not have a DC for six months. Three IAS officers were posted but they refused to serve there. Our CM instead of sleeping in villages should wake up to issues like these..."
Alkod Hanumanthappa, the district-in-charge minister of Raichur said, "it is not that we have been sleeping... I put pressure on the CM, but no officer was willing to come to Raichur."
Manjunath Prasad who finally stepped in two months ago in says staff crunch is a thing of the past. " I identified excess staff in other departments and moved them as panchayat secretaries," he says. But administrative knots remain.
A bill collector in a panchayat in Lingasore taluk said the new secretaries, who have come from other departments, know nothing about their new jobs. "By the time they understand what is happening this year will be over," he said. Two crucial project-related posts at panchayat level, computer operator and technical assistant, have not been filled in majority of the panchayats. These two posts can be useful in expediting the paper work and payment.
If finding staff is difficult, motivating them to work is just impossible. A panchayat secretary in Raichur district said a new programme like this cannot be implemented just through existing officials.
"The job scheme itself involves a lot of work and the CEO has decided to combine a literacy campaign with it. It took me two days to get a shed built for that in a village. Now rest of my month will go in building sheds in other villages," he said.
NREGA empowers the poor by giving them right to work and checks corruption by paying through checks. The local political leaders, typically land owners, who usually collude with bureaucracy to milk programmes, have one more reason to oppose NREGA. It makes labour more expensive for them.
Ravi Kumar Nayak president of Gunja Halli panchayat said as his village had irrigated lands and high employment, there were no takers for jobs under NREGA. But after he left a poor man in his 30s said people wanted work in Gunja Halli also. But as the engineer was asking them to both desilt tank and carry silt to a distance of 200 metres the work was unviable. "If a tractor is brought to carry mud you will see a lot of people turning up for work," he said.
Day 4
With the best of the intentions NREGA has unwittingly turned into a battlefield between the sexes in many villages in Raichur. NREGA stipulates equal pay for both men and women. It also links pay to output. Both these conditions though very progressive have got entangled in complex village dynamics and turned against women.
As mostly earth-work is being taken up under NREGA, men in many villages such as Masarkal have figured they can achieve higher output if they work alone without women.
But in Ameengada, of roughly 200 people working at the tank bed, women are evenly represented. Ellamma of Navjeevan Mahila Okkoota said this was the result of a battle fought hard. In August when the work began she said participation of women was limited. But Okkoota protested and persuaded men to include women, she said.
In the tank desilting work there is a culturally-set division of labour. Men dig earth and women load them to tractors. So an excess of women creates an imbalance and reduces the output. So, in many villages women are asked to come to work with 'male partners' and single women are turned back as 'liabilities'.
This norm goes against widows, deserted women, devadasis and women whose husbands have migrated. These women are also among the poorest individuals in the village; they are near destitutes, and hence need the work most.
Single women seem to be in substantial numbers in Raichur. The scheduled caste colony of Ameengada has about 30 homes. About 10 of them are reportedly single woman-families.
On 11th September many women, unaccopmpanied by men, were reportedly turned back in Ameenagada. Thirty five single women sat before a tractor stalling work and asked why they should fast when work had come for the village, said Ellamma. Though the work resumed the next day, on 13th about 20 of them had still not found jobs.
This correspondent saw four women leaving village on 13th to seek work elsewhere just when tank desilting was in full force in their own village. These women said they preferred government work as wages at Rs 69 were high. The sunflower cutting work they expected to find that day would pay them only Rs 20. But they had no choice as they had gone to the worksite twice and returned without luck.
Opposition has also come from other married women in the village who say single women benefit from the labour of their husbands.
Basalingamma, 35, said it was true that women could not dig earth as equals to men. But she said government should provide work such as earthen bunding and afforestation, which women could handle better.
Women also find it difficult to convince engineers that their output is according to the rulebook. Ellamma says in Navilkal the local engineer has paid Rs 40 to men and Rs 30 to women though both have dug pits of the same size.
posted by arun at 8:37 PM
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