WHEN Keshav Tandon, of Banarasi village in Raipur district, announced the launch of a project to deepen two village ponds, he thought it will be a showpiece for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme in the state. For, Banarasi has been facing acute water shortage.
Two years later, the project is still on paper, as nobody in the village is willing to work for it. The villagers last year met in a Gram Sabha and decided not to work on any NREGP project in the village — something that is a big disappointment for Keshav Tandon, the village sarpanch.
Tandon said the condition of both the ponds had deteriorated since then, which would only aggravate the water crisis. But villagers are in no mood to listen to him. Villagers also did not turn up for the construction of a canal near the village. The project was to have been executed by the state’s irrigation department.
Tulsidas, one of the 142 job cardholders for NREGP work in the village, said the reason for villagers boycotting NREGP projects was simple: there was no incentive to work for just Rs 75 a day when one could easily get double the amount just 25 km away, in the capital of Chhattisgarh. Tulsidas and his wife both work as labourers at construction sites in Raipur.
Tandon is hoping the increase in the minimum wage for NREGP to Rs 100 may encourage people like them to work on the village projects. He may be right. Listen to Rakesh, another cardholder. “At Rs 100 a day, it makes sense to work in the village instead of cycling for miles to earn just Rs 50 more,” he said.
Tandon said the other problem that had distanced villagers from NREGP projects was the requirement of opening a bank or post office account. “Since one requires Rs 500 just to open the account, it doesn’t make sense,” he said.
The problems faced by villages such as Banarasi are, however, non-existent in agricultural areas of the state. In fact, the situation there is exactly the opposite. The government rate for agricultural wages is Rs 80, but the big farmers pay just Rs 40-50. This has diverted workers towards NREGP even as the agriculture sector reels under a severe shortage of workers.
“Even in the public work projects, shortage of labourers has been an issue and has affected the projects,” said Chief Engineer of the Public Works Department, D K Agrawal. The department gives about 95 per cent of the work on contract.
Private builders are also facing the heat. “Because of NREGP, about 30 per cent of labourers have stopped coming from the villages,” building engineer Alok Mahawar said. If the NREGP wages increase, farming, construction and other sectors will have to struggle hard to get workers, he added.
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