Despite Repeat Promises, MNREGA Continues to Fail the Common Man in Rural UP

Oran (Uttar Pradesh): Oran, a village in the Bisanda block of Banda district in Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh, has a population of approximately 6,200 souls. But the upcoming census might have a few altered readings, if you ask Maiyyadin, a resident who tells us about how his son has left his birthplace, and traded a “shehri” life over this one. “Palayan kar gaya hai (He’s migrated)," says Maiyyadin, speaking of the one over-powering malaise that affects Bundelkhand like a plague, much like its perpetual state of drought. Maiyyadin links the need for migration to the lack of money-making opportunities in Oran, specifically citing the near-defunct status of “MNREGA mazdoori”.

It is something his fellow Oran-dwellers concur with. According to most, the village has seen little to no work under MNREGA for the past three years – something that shocks them till date. As Om Prakash puts it, “There are so many of us here, willing to do the mazdoori. We need it. But we do not get any work.”

Bijarniya, who has been tilling farmland on contract for the last year or so, tells us of the hardships she’s been facing as she just about manages to get by – feeding herself and her family of four. “It’s definitely been over a year since I got work under MNREGA.” Her neighbour Maheshwari, adds in an angry tone, “We ask the pradhan constantly, and do you know what he says? He says our village has no work… Leave if you want to.”

The bone of contention, MNREGA, unfurled in 2005 precisely to help assuage the very real problem of daily wages for a largely BPL (below poverty line) and Antyodaya population, has seen one too many problems over the last few years, arguably the most intense in its 13-year lifespan thus far. The world’s largest make-work programme, it appears, has ceased to work itself, in one of those sheer displays of bone-cutting irony often encountered in rural UP.

The 2017-2018 budget allocated Rs 48,000 crore to it, and yet, reports showed that 56% MNREGA wages were delayed (a sharp spike from the 39% calculated in the 2012-2013 annual report), and a whopping 15% of daily wage seekers had been left by the wayside, forgotten, and unable to find work through 2016 & 2017.

In fact, it was around this time last year, when Yogi Adityanath had been sworn in as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, that the Centre had intervened with modifications to MNREGA to guarantee not just work, but lots more work. It was in April 2017 that the 100-day promise was expanded to include 50 more days, when eight states were officially declared drought-affected, Uttar Pradesh among them. 

It is only pertinent then that as the BJP-led government completes a year in office, the local rozgar sevak at Banda’s Oran, Ghanshyam Tiwari, parrots the fine print of the scheme, refusing to acknowledge the urgency of the issue, “Work is always provided within 15 days.” He resorts to the usual “Aadhaar nahi hai” excuse on being pressed further, to which Om Prakash replies,” If it’s not that, it’s job cards. Please. These cards are not the issue.” 

At the end of 2017, several workers had marched to Jantar Mantar in protest, asking about the mockery that was being made of the “right to work”. They spoke of systemic inefficiencies and the lack of accountability at several levels – no records at banks, post offices, hoarded job cards stashed at pradhan’s houses etc. – and how the “payment on time” model, intrinsic to the policy, was flouted all the time.

In 2018, in an Adityanath-blessed village in Banda, however, the questions have turned into resigned statements of facts. “We don’t own land,” says Om Prakash. “There is nothing we can do. There is no work.”

Khabar Lahariya is a rural, video-first digital news organisation with an all-women network of reporters in eight districts of Uttar Pradesh.

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