Suvarna Bhagwat is the unlikely heroine of Patoda’s battle for jobs under the rural lifeline, MNREGA. The plucky mother of three children was among a group of around 500 women who sat in protest at the sub-divisional office in their village last month and refused to budge till they got jobs.
After spending half the day there, they were chased away by the police. Suvarna was among the five who got injured in the scuffle.
“I fainted but it was more from hunger than pain. I had not eaten that day,” she said. Suvarna is farm-hand who survives on daily wages. On the days she doesn’t get work, the family goes without meals. The strident protest led to results: within a few days Patoda’s protesters were enrolled for jobs.
The late monsoon burst this week will help the drinking water crisis in Marathwada which has received the most deficient monsoon in the country this season. But by now the kharif crop has already been ravaged and demand for work under MNREGA has been mounting. In August, protests also broke out in Beed’s Ambejogai for MNREGA job cards.
The MNREGA-among the largest job-creation programmes in the world-is a social safety net for the rural poor. The scheme which was started by the UPA government supposed to fund 100 days of work at the minimum wage for rural job-seekers. The NDA has now increased the limit to 150 days for regions impacted by the deficient monsoon.
Marathwada needs the additional work. The region is also known for the seasonal migration of sugar-cane workers who head to western Maharashtra each year to cut cane. By now, the sugar factories usually give them a hefty advance. With the sugar crop in shambles this year, there is no advance in sight.
Farm-hands, who are at the bottom of the village economy are the worst hit. “If the farmers have no crop, what work will they give us? Since January, our jobs have been steadily drying up,” says Sindhu Gholap, who had joined the Patoda demonstration.
Patoda had a rather unique problem. It was redesignated from a gram panchayat to an urban nagar panchayat three months ago, which temporarily cut its access to registrations for the job scheme.
Yet, across the state, MNREGA data is not encouraging. Of the labour budget of 1,087 lakh days, only 345 lakh days of work has been generated so far. This means that only a third of the labour budget for the year has been utilised over a five-month span since April.
However, officials say the work is demand-driven and as the distress peaks, more jobs will be made available. “Last year we spent Rs 1,619 crores on MNREGA. In five months alone this year, we have spent Rs 926 crores,” says state employment guarantee scheme secretary Prabhakar Deshmukh, So far this year, 14.5 lakh people have worked in the scheme compared to 21.5 lakh in 2014.