The case of the disappearing ponds

This piece was carried in Infochange (http://www.infochaqngeindia.org/) in June 2010

http://infochangeindia.org/201006268358/Governance/Features/The-case-of-the-disappearing-ponds.html

The case of the disappearing ponds


By Pradeep Baisakh

An RTI inquiry in Kusmal village in Orissa’s Nuapada district revealed that though in official records seven farm ponds have been built under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, not a single pond exists in reality. Across this district, which has high levels of migration, Rs 77 lakh has been misappropriated under the job guarantee scheme by unscrupulous administration officials at all levels

The pond the Junior Engineer tried to dig after expose (photo: Khuturam Sunani)

In Nuapada district of Orissa, farm ponds costing Rs 77 lakh, dug under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), have vanished – or never existed.

In October 2009, Khirasindhu Sagria, a youth from Kusmal village in Birighat panchayat under Khariar block of Nuapada district, sought information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act from the Kariar block office about the status of seven farm ponds that were to be dug in his village under MNREGA. A resolution had been passed in the gram sabha in 2007-08 to this effect.

The answer to his query was that all the ponds were completed as per records, at a cost of Rs 2.14 lakh. The fact is that not a single pond exists. The projects were started in 2008-09 but abandoned after some time. Panchayat and block level officials suggested that the ponds were washed away by the rain!

The pond-vanishing phenomenon has been occurring all over the district. Construction of about 2,000 farm ponds on private lands has been undertaken officially in the district from 2007-08 to 2009-10 at an estimated cost of more than Rs 10 crore. Some Rs 3.74 crore has already been spent. But verification of 200 farm ponds in eight panchayats in Khariar, Boden, and Sinapali blocks reveals that 41 farm ponds are non-existent (about 20%). So the quantum of money misappropriated in the form of ghost works is close to Rs 77 lakh in the district.

Apart from these non-existent ponds, Ajit Panda, a social activist who has studied the corruption in the farm ponds, says that “in about 50% of the remaining farm ponds, the work expenditure has been shown to be much higher than the work done. If we include the half-done farm ponds in the calculation, misappropriation would be more than 40% of the total expenditure.”

Khirasindhu Sagria-the whistle blower (Photo: Khuturam Sunani)

In the case of Kusmal village about which the RTI inquiry was made, once the gram sabha passed the resolution on building the ponds, the gram sathi, Rina Mandal, asked the beneficiaries in May 2008 to start the work and assured them that the money would be released. Later, her husband Jogeswar asked the beneficiaries to stop the work and told them they could get the full payment even without digging the pond. He asked for a bribe of Rs 5,000 from each of the workers and managed to amass a sum of Rs 35,000.

Asked why they gave the bribe, Bidyadhar Majhi, one of the beneficiaries, said, “We feared that unless we give him the money he may scrap the projects altogether.” The other beneficiaries are Nutan Sagria, Renudhar Gahir, Sahadev Majhi, Makarsingh Majhi, Parakshita Majhi and Kokil Majhi.

According to the procedure laid down in the MGNREGA, the block development officer (BDO) must put his signature on the final report after receiving a photograph of the completed pond. In this case the BDO and the junior engineer have both signed, though the pond does not exist.

There are other irregularities. Muster rolls have been fudged to adjust the payment; names of dead persons and teachers and students of the local school show up on the muster roll. Hari Majhi is dead, Nirekha Jagat is paralysed and Nimesh Sunani is a 10-year-old student, but their names appear in the muster roll to suggest that they have worked on the pond projects.

The BDO, Nabin Chandra Naik, and the collector, Bishnu Prasad Panda, were informed about the fraud in January 2010 but took no action. After Khirasindhu Sagria blew the whistle on the scam, the junior engineer, S Samantray, attempted to dig the ponds using machines (which is forbidden under MGNREGA), and the gram sathi, Rina Mandal, foisted a false case of rape and chain-snatching on him.

Rajkishor Mishra, Adviser to the Supreme Court Commission on Right to Food, made an e-complaint on March 5, 2010, to the Commissioner-cum-Secretary of the panchayati raj department of the state, S N Tripathy, and the Project Director of MGNREGA, S K Lohani, and eventually wrote to Amita Sharma, Additional Secretary, Union Ministry of Rural Development.

Ashwani Kumar, member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council (CEGC) wrote to Amita Sharma urging her to send a central team to investigate the allegations. The rural development ministry despatched a national monitoring team headed by Colonel U B Singh which interacted with the beneficiaries, officials and other stakeholders in April 2010.

The chief minister of the state, Naveen Patnaik, has ordered appropriate action against the collector and the project director of the District Rural Development Agency, Akshya Jena. Four officials -- the present BDO of Khariar block, Nabin Chandra Naik, the former BDO Chita Ranjan Bangola, the Additional BDO, Bijaya Kumar Muduli and the Assistant Engineer Keshab Mahanty -- have been suspended.

Termination notices have been given to the junior engineer and the gram sathi and FIRs have been filed against them. Departmental proceedings against the Asst Engineer and the BDO were initiated.

Even though punitive actions have been initiated against the erring officials, the larger issue remains: what about the entitlement of the poor labourers which was siphoned off by the greedy officers? Will the government compensate their entitlements and loss?

The non-existen farm pond of Makarsingh Majhi (Photo: Khuturam Sunani)

The district of Nuapada is probably the most neglected in the state when it comes to implementation of MGNREGA. There are 100,000 job card holders of whom only about 18,000 households have been provided work in the last financial year (2009-10) for an average of 26 days. This is the official figure. Given the degree of corruption discussed above, the real benefit to the people from MGNREGA can well be imagined.

According to the DRDA, if it gets timely release of money under MGNREGA, it could plan and implement better. However, Khuturam Sunani, a journalist, says, “The district has been unable to furnish the utilisation certificates in time, failing which release of money has been inconsistent. Government records received under RTI reveal that in Komna block alone about 50% of the farm ponds which started in 2007-08 and 2008-09 remain incomplete even today.”

In one case, labourers have not been paid their wages, amounting to Rs 3.16 lakh, for the past two years. Despite the Lok Adalat on MGNREGA held in the district in February 2010 ordering the administration to act, things have not been settled yet. When the central monitors asked for the records, the block authorities were unable to show the same.

Nuapada is prone to high levels of migration. People from here go to work in Hyderabad and elsewhere in brick kilns in very poor conditions. One of the objectives of MGNREGA is to reduce migration but this it has conspicuously failed to do due to the apathy of the state government and inefficiency and corrupt practices of the district administration.

(Pradeep Baisakh is a freelance journalist based in Orissa)


Infochange News & Features, June 2010

A school at work!

This piece was published in GRASSROOTS in June 15, 2010 issue

A school at work!

A new ray of hope for migrant child labourers…


PRADEEP BAISAKH, Odisha

A migrant child working in a brick kiln in Tamil Nadu (Photo by Biju George)

Sunita Tandi, the eight-year-girl from Jharani village under Tureikala block of Balangir district in Odisha has migrated to Bomalaramaro area of Nalgonda district in Andhra Pradesh. She came along with her parents who have gone in October 2009, to work in the brick kilns there. Sunita is from ST community. Like any other migrant child, she also would have discontinued her study and joined back in same class three when she comes back to her village school in June/July 2010. But thanks to the initiative taken by a Civil Society Organisation (CSO), Aide et Action to run worksite schools at brick kilns in Andhra, she is now continuing her study. Sanu Behera, the Odia teacher who teaches about sixty students in the school there says “Sunita will appear her annual tests here in Odia language and will be elevated to class four after returning to her village school”. Necessary order have been passed by the Sarva Sikshya Abhiyan (SSA), Odisha for acknowledging the exams conducted in the brick kiln schools. A similar initiative for study of the migrant children has also been initiated by the aforesaid organisation in Tamil Nadu for the Odia migrant children.

Lakhs of people from Western districts of Odisha have traditionally been migrating for last 30 odd years to Andhra and Tamil Nadu to work in brick kilns. This sort of migration is termed as distressed or forced migration as people do not have enough of livelihood option in the home districts. Even after the enactment of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the situation has not improved much due its lackadaisical implementation in the state. People generally migrate with families and stay in the work place for seven to eight months. Child goes to the brick kilns as a child labour by design as s/he constitutes a part of the work unit called Pathuria. The Pathuria constitutes two adult members and a child who mould bricks. As a result the child loses out his/her education and becomes a labour in making. The migration starts during September/October and the families stay till May/June next year in the worksites. As the annual examinations are conducted in the schools in April/May, the child fails to attend the same in its village school due to his/her absence. So when they come back they continue in the same class and again in September they migrate out. After this cycle continues for a year or two, the child eventually drops out of school. A study conducted in 2009 by Migration Information and resource centre (MiRC), Aide et Action in western Odisha suggests that about 23 % of the total migrant children drops out in the process and still alarming is about 28% of such children just do not go to schools.

Some initiatives were taken by the CSOs in Odisha and the state government to start seasonal hostels by name of Residential Child care Centre (RCC) in the source place to accommodate such children when their parents are migrating. At one time RCCs could retain 5000 children in the state.

The initiative that started in 2000 functioned well for four to five yeas but eventually faltered due to apathy of the state. This time around, in Balangir district of Odisha about 49 RCCs have been started under National Child Labour Project (NCLP) but it was done only in January/February 2010 when all the children had already migrated.

As supplement to RCC, Action Aid, a Civil Society Organisation had started the trend of running work site schools in the brick kilns in destination places. This model is doing still well with other CSOs like Aide et Action joining the initiative and extending it to Tamil Nadu. The SSA, Odisha has agreed to support both the leading CSOs in this initiative namely, Aide et Action and Action Aid in running brick kiln schools in the destination places in AP and TN. The SSAs in TN and AP are sharing their primary school premises for the Odia migrant children and providing Mid Day Meals (MDM) to them. Odia teachers have been appointed by these organisations for teaching the Odia children in brick kilns. After completion of education in destination places, annual exams will be conducted by the same teachers there and then the children will be mainstreamed in their native schools and admitted into the higher classes. But that’s not enough as both these agencies are able to provide primary education to only 1000 migrant children in both these states. This model has to qualify from the stage of experimentation to the stage of accepted state policies.

Odia migrant children in a worksite school in Andhra Pradesh (photo by Pradeep Baisakh)

In wake of enactment of Right to Education Act (RTEA), coordination is being done by the CSOs in AP, Odisha and Tamil Nadu with the respective education departments for providing education to the migrant children. As a result of this effort, this time around, state of Tamil Nadu has come up with a draft action plan to ensure early child care and education to all the children migrating to the state from other states and the Andhra Pradesh government has decided to impart education to 50,000 such migrant children in association with the CSOs.

Apart from the issue of education of the migrant children, the issue of child labour also remains as an issue of concern. Sunita, who attend the worksite school in Nalgonda district in Andhra Pradesh continues to support her parents in brick making. She has to put extra hours for it as she also has to attend school and do her home work. Parents of Sunita, Gourang and Miriki Tandi say “We are quite happy that the schooling of our child has not been stopped here. We are trying hard to reduce work burden on her so that she concentrate on her studies.” Virish Sannap, the supervisor of the kiln where Sunita’s parents work says “in other kilns children are working, but in my kiln we do not encourage child labour!”. But in reality children do work as discussed above and they constitute a vital part of the work unit-Pathuria.

Umi Daniel from Aide et Action says “Children’s education is an entry point for us. Immediately raising hard issues like child labour in kilns is fraught with risks of backlash from the brick kiln owners. Gradually we will take up that aspect and influence the governments of Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh to ban child labour in the kilns”. Till then, let’s hope that the brick kiln schools would lend them some light.

Starvation stalks Balangir, government in denial

This piece was carried in India Together (http://www.indiatogether.org/) on 26th April 2010

http://indiatogether.org/2010/apr/pov-balangir.htm

HISTORY AND HUNGER REPEAT

Starvation stalks Balangir, government in denial

Even as the state government refuses to accept the cause behind the recent 50 starvation deaths reported by the media, hunger stalks the people of Balangir and other KBK districts in Orissa portending more such tragedies, writes Pradeep Baisakh.

26 April 2010 - On 24 February 2010, the print daily Hindustan Times reported 50 chronic hunger-related deaths in Balangir district of Orissa. The lead story laid bare five deaths in the family of Jhintu Bariha in Gudighat village, Khaprakhol block of the district, which occurred between September 2009 and December 2009. India Together had earlier published my story on the same family (Starvation death continues as officials demur). There were also reports in the local language media on this issue.

The HT story ruffled the state and the national capital. One of the immediate upshots was the transfer of District Collector S Aswasti. Later, the cases were investigated by the special rapporteur of NHRC Damodar Sarangi; the High Court of Orissa also sought response from the state government.

Balangir district is part of the undivided Kalahandi-Balangir-Koraput (KBK) region of Orissa which is notorious for starvation deaths, child sale cases, overwhelming malnourishment, and acute poverty. About 62 percent of the 13.4 lakh people (Census 2001) in Balangir district live below the poverty line, official estimates suggest.

However, despite the buzz in the media, the government denied the starvation deaths of Jhitu Bariha’s family and submitted its own findings based on an inquiry carried out by the district administration. According to this probe, malaria was the cause of the deaths in the family.

The report of 50 deaths, ironically, evoked mixed response from social activists and the media. While some doubted the veracity of the number of deaths reported, others heaved a sigh of relief as this grave issue was finally being discussed at the national level.

Subsequently, I visited the district and interacted with some families who had lost their dear ones in the last two years. My primary focus was to ascertain the cause behind these tragedies and study the conditions under which these deaths occurred.

1. Rahasa Bhoi, 45, belonging to ST community in Chhuinnara village, died in January 2009. He was a seasonal migrant worker for many years and used to migrate to Bangalore and Cuttack district of Orissa along with his family. In 2009, while the family was in Bangalore, he suffered from fever and severe headache. He was brought back to the village as the treatment he received in Bangalore did not help. His health deteriorated even after a one-and-a-half month stay at the Patnagarh government hospital. His case was referred to the Burla hospital -- one of the best government hospitals in the state. By then the family had spent Rs 60,000 on his treatment by selling its two acres of land, gold, etc. A chronically ill Rahasa Bhoi died. At the time of his death, he was unable to lift his head, move his legs and hands, or speak. “The doctor could not tell what the disease was,” says Brindavan Bhoi, nephew of Rahasa who used to attend on him at the hospital. Rahasa is survived by wife Padmani Bhoi, four daughters, and a minor son.

Following the tragedy and loss of assets, the family has slipped into the zone of high vulnerability. The local panchayat has given an APL card recently. A road work which began in November 2009 under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) came to a halt as the villagers could not continue to work due to a three-month delay in payment. Dogged by lack of employment, three of Rahasa’s daughters are now migrating to Cuttack district to work in brick kilns while his wife does some work in the village whenever available. The eldest and the only married daughter Sumitra says, “We used to get regular food only when we were at work in Bangalore as the landlord used to give us ‘kharchi’ (weekly expenditure). But when we are in the village during off-seasons, there isn’t much work available. We get to eat only when we get work; otherwise we almost go hungry. After my father’s death, the food intake of our family is worse than ever before.”

When asked how she get her three daughters married, Rahasa’s wife had no answers.

2. Nidhi Biswal, 50, who lived in Tara village of Kapani GP in Belpara block, had a small patch of low-yielding agricultural land. The family used to migrate to Hyderabad to eke out a living. While at home, they used to depend on the rarely available work. In 2006, while in Orissa, Nidhi fell ill to diabetes and sickle-cell disease and consulted a private clinic at Belpada. His wife Bhumi’s efforts to ensure proper treatment by borrowing money turned futile. The predicament went on for two years. Nidhi was bed-ridden for a year and passed away in January 2009.

Like Rahasa’s, Nidhi’s family too got an APL card only after the tragedy struck the grief-stricken lot. His blank job card exposes the true state of MGNREGA as the villagers hardly get to work under this scheme. Tulsa Dharua, secretary of a self-help group in the village, says: “We survive mostly on daily wage work whenever available. MGNREGA has been discouraging due to insufficient work and much-delayed payments.”

According to Tulsa, Nidhi’s family survives on a single meal put together with extreme difficulty. However, this is not an exception as hunger stalks the entire village relentlessly. A debt-ridden Bhumi has now migrated to Cuttack district to work in brick kilns along with her three-year-old son. Barring the APL card, she has no other support; not even the National Family Benefit Scheme (NFBC) benefits -- a one-time compensation of Rs 10,000 she is entitled to since her family has lost the primary breadwinner.

The special rapporteur of NHRC visited these two families in March 2010 to study the cause of deaths. The report has not been made public yet.

Do the scanty sources of livelihood, shoddy implementation of the government welfare schemes, and the poor quantity of food intake of these families indicate chronic hunger as the reason behind the deaths? Any layperson could argue that inadequate food intake makes people physically weak, results in the breakdown of their immunity system, and renders them vulnerable to diseases. Acute poverty also eliminates chances of recovery as the victims’ families fail to afford proper medical attention.

What is starvation death?

Ironically, starvation death is now an expert subject. It’s not the tragedies or the plight of the family members that matters; but the niggling discussion on the definition of hunger by the government, the media, and even some social activists. It is this expertise that often questions the veracity of the reports on starvation deaths.

The Commissioner of Supreme Court Commission on Right to Food Dr N C Saxena and Harsh Mander laid out a starvation protocol. Section 1(i) (definition of starvation) reads: “An adult having access to food giving less than 850 kilocalories a day”. Similarly, Section 2(i) further explains what constitutes starvation death: “It is to be recognised that starvation death does not occur directly and exclusively due to starvation. Victims usually succumb to diseases due to severe food deficit for a long period.” The protocol also suggests that while investigating starvation deaths, one should take into account the food and livelihood conditions of the family and examine how the government welfare schemes are operating.

At the time of their deaths, it is clear that the families of Rahasa Bhoi and Nidhi Biswal were stuck in the downward spiral of poverty and disease. Welfare schemes including PDS and MGNREGA did not come to their rescue. Through MNREGA, on an average, only 25 percent of the total card-holders availed 43 days of work in 2009-2010 in the district. Although disputable, these official figures lay bare the failed government intervention to ensure employment to the harried lot, thanks to half-hearted efforts and delayed payments.

Rues Sanjay Mishra, a social activist from Balangir, “Due to the delay in BPL survey which was last done in 1997 (Survey 2002 was not implemented), about 35,000 to 40,000 deserving families in the district have been left out of the crucial BPL net. Starvation is inevitable in such families.”

Bleak health scenario

What compounds the situation is the decreasing government expenditure on public health, non-availability of medical and paramedical staff, diagnostic services, and medicines in government hospitals. Consequently, the out-of-pocket expenditure among the poor has gone up making access to private medical care almost impossible. In short, death becomes imminent.

Having lost an earning member as well as assets, the family finds it hard to wriggle itself out of debt, poverty, and of course, hunger. Even as the conspicuous absence of government support stares in the face of the affected, starvation deaths get reported. And only occasionally, the lives led in hunger too.

It takes a cursory look to figure out the extent of hunger and poverty dehumanising the people of Balangir and other KBK districts. The need of the hour is to assess the impact of the decreasing spending in the social sector and rationalisation of food subsidy on the poor. The government must accept the reality and ensure effective implementation of major schemes like MGNREGA, PDS, old-age pension, NFBC, emergency feeding, mid-day meal scheme, etc. NGOs, on the other hand, must pressure the government to focus on all-inclusive growth, not just Sensex-driven confabulations. ⊕

Pradeep Baisakh

26 Apr 2010

The author is a freelance journalist based in Bhubaneswar.

Fight for transparency

This piece came in 'Grassroots' in March, 15 2010 issue

Fight for transparency

Activists who seek the truth behind the processing of national schemes end up paying a heavy price!


PRADEEP BAISAKH, Orissa

Kailash Nayak's wife Bauri with their daughter

The organised opposition by the elected members of the Panchayats in Rajasthan in form of attacks on the social activist organizing social audits of NREGA works in Banswara in December 2007 and Jhalawar in February 2008 took an ugly form this time around in Alwar in November 2009. The Sarpanches and Gram Panchayat officials took to streets and blocked highways. They pressurised the government to cancel the planned social audits in the district and got orders from the courts against the inclusion of social activist and NGOs in future social audit process in NREGA-now Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA). This time they got overt support from some elected members of State Assembly and Parliament. It is also alleged that some of the District Collectors in the State had put their weight behind the move.

Assertions by the activists and people at grass root from across the country to bring about transparency and accountability in the implementation of this law have been met with backlash by the vested interest groups who stood to be exposed from the whole exercise of social audit. The backlash took various forms: disruption during social audits/public hearing process, bloody and murderous attack,many a times right under the nose of the government officials thus clamping false police cases and finally, liquidating the ‘over-enthusiastic activists’!

On 23rd December 2009, in Araria district of Bihar, the goons of the Mukhiya (the Panchayat head man) attacked a ward member who was encouraging a villager to testify fearlessly for having received lower wages than what was recorded in the muster roll. This was discovered during a social audit conducted by Jan Jagaran Abhiyan, a people’s organization in association with the district administration. According to the compilation by Anis Vanaik on NREGA-related violence, in January 2009, workers of Aira Kake Mau of Hardoi district of Uttar Pradesh protesting in front of the Sarpanch’s house demanding the payment of their wages under NREGA were mercilessly beaten by the goons of the Sarpanch right in front of the Station House Officer of the local PS, who was standing there as a silent observer. Similarly, on 3rd February 2009, Neyamat Ansari and Bhukhan Singh, two social workers of Gram Swaraj Abhiyan, Jharkhand who mobilised people for the Lok Adalat held on NREGA by the Jharkhand government in Latehar district were later framed in false cases of attempting to murder a forest guard and were put in jail for six days.

Apart from these backlashes, some ghastly incidences of murdering the activists also took place. Rajeswar Das, a CPI (ML) activist from Deoghar district of Jharkhand, who was active in exposing corruption in NREGA works, was attacked and murdered by the goons and his wife was seriously injured in the attack. Similarly Kamleswar Yadav, activist from Jharkhand, Narayan Hareka, naib-Sarpanch from Orissa were murdered for fighting against corruption in NREGA.

Why Kailash went missing?

A case that is still interesting is that of Kailash Nayak from Ganjam district of Orissa, who is missing since august 2008. Kailash, a daily labourer from dalit community applied for work under NREGS in July 2006. Failing to get the same he applied for unemployment allowance near the BDO of Jagannath Prasad block. Then he filed an appeal near the District Collector, and approached the Chief Minister’s Grievance Cell. The CM’s grievance cell wrote to the Collector in November 2006 to provide job to the applicant in a month's time. Then, as usual, the order of the CM was handed down from the Collector to the BDO and then to the Sarpanch, but with no effect. Again in June 2007, a similar complaint was made by Kailash near the then State Project Coordinator, NREGA, R N Dash (the Secretary cum Commissioner- Panchayati Raj department) who promised to act in fifteen days. But Kailash neither got any job nor the unemployment allowance. He then resorted to seeking information from the concerned offices through RTI. Having got no response, he filed a complaint near the State Information Commission (SIC). During the series of hearings of his case in the SIC, he went missing after august 2008. Finally the SIC also disposed of the case in May 2009 without penalising the guilty for not providing information to Kailash as ‘missing’ Kailash Naik failed to appear before the Commission! Knocking all the doors and using all possible provisions of the so called pro-people laws, Kailash finally met with the fate that nobody stands witness to.

The administration has shown a lukewarm response to the ‘backlash’ of the vested interest groups on the people and the activist. After almost all the NREGA activists of the country such as Aruna Roy, Prof Jean Drèze, Nikhil Dey and others demanded for a CBI inquiry to the ghastly murder incidence of Lalit Mehta in Palamu district in May 2008, the state government finally agreed for the same in July 2008. However, CBI found the incidence as a road robbery case and framed charge against Som Bihari Singh and Kamta Singh. But many, who worked with Lalit believed this as a NREGA related murder-facts of which could not be established by the CBI. Lot of commitments have been made by several politicians including the current Minister for Rural Development - C P Joshi to bring the attackers of NREGA activists to book. In reality however very little is done by the administration.

Jean Dreze addressing gathering on Lalit Mehta Sahadat Divas held at Daltonganj, Jharkhand on May 14, 2009

High degree of corruption in implementation of welfare schemes in India has been the rule with transparency and accountably being rather alien terminologies. For the first time probably, NREGA became the kind of law (to be operationally in form of a scheme) which was designed with in-built provisions for openness in forms of reading muster rolls in open, maintenance of Job Cards, regularly conducting socials audits by the Gram Sabhas etc. But these ‘legal adventurism’ in favour of open and participatory governance were not to be taken easily by people in position and power who had been immensely benefiting from the ‘rot’ in the system.

As a matter of fact, regular social audits under NREGA have exposed the existing elected representatives-official-contractor nexus in receiving fixed percentage cuts from welfare schemes.

In an interview to a news magazine, Prof Jean Drèze, development economist said about the deep rooted corruption and nexus among contractor officials and politicians. Therefore, the backlash. But what about the political dispensation at the centre, which has won back the national election trumpeting the success of NREGA, reneges from its promises for protection of people fighting for their statutory right to employment and the activist facilitating it? If such spectre of violence continues with impunity the current establishment may have to pay a good price in the next election for neglecting common people’s interest in favour of the mighty.

Do pro-people legislations actually work for the poor?

This piece came in Infochange India in February 2010

http://infochangeindia.org/201002158160/Governance/Features/Do-pro-people-legislations-actually-work-for-the-poor.html

Do pro-people legislations actually work for the poor?


By Pradeep Baisakh

After three years of fighting for his right to unemployment allowance under NREGA, and to find out under the RTIA why the allowance has been withheld and the erring authorities not been penalised, Kailash Nayak has got nothing. And to top it all, he has gone missing and the police claim they cannot trace him

On August 6, 2008 Kailash Nayak, a daily labourer from Talaganda village in Ganjam district of Orissa, set out for home around 8.30 pm after visiting the Indira Colony market 3 km away. But he did not arrive at his home and has been missing since then.

A First Information Report (FIR) was lodged in the nearest police station and the matter is before the superintendent of police, head of the district police force. But there is no trace of Kailash. Has he been kidnapped or murdered or has he secretly joined the Maoist cadres? And why should any of this happen to a poor daily labourer?

The answer may lie in two important legislations that were passed recently and whose intention is to empower Kailash not making him disappear mysteriously.

NREGA and RTI: Two pro-people legislations

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and the Right to Information Act (RTIA) are considered almost revolutionary legislations intended to change the lives of common people.

NREGA guarantees 100 days of employment every year to every rural household in the country. The remarkable feature of the law is the provision of disbursement of unemployment allowance to the willing work seeker if s/he is not provided employment within 15 days of application for work. (See the law: http://rural.nic.in/rajaswa.pdf). The Act also has a grievance redressal mechanism by which the aggrieved work seeker can approach different officials in the hierarchy who are mandated to dispose of his/her grievance in a time-bound manner.

Similarly, the RTIA provides for supply of information to citizens of the country by public authorities in a time-bound manner and an independent authority is placed to hear the grievances. (See the law: http://rti.gov.in/rti-act.pdf ).

These are the first laws in the country that explicitly provide for penalising officials who violate its mandate. This is done to ensure that the government system does not take these laws for granted but makes them deliver. The RTIA got the President’s assent on June 15, 2005 and NREGA on September 5, 2005. Both are revolutionary in that they usher in an era of transparent and accountable governance, provide financial security to poor rural people of the country, and help, by implication, to address problems of starvation deaths, malnutrition, distressed migration etc.

Mixed results are reported on the functioning of these two path-breaking laws in the last four years of their operation, but the case of the missing Kailash makes you wonder whether they actually work for the poorer class of society.

The travails of Kailash

Kailash Nayak addressing the press in Bhubaneswar in June 2007

In July 2006, Kailash Nayak, a dalit, applied for work under NREGA under the block development officer (BDO) of Jagannath Prasad block, Devendranath Khandingkal (since deceased). About 250 people from nearby villages also applied for work under NREGA during the same period. Fifteen mandated days passed, but no work was provided to the villagers, so they applied for unemployment allowance under the same authority. When nothing came of this, Kailash went a step further and filed an appeal in the jurisdiction of the then district collector, Sanjay Kumar Singh. Still failing to get any justice, he put his case to the Grievance Cell of the chief minister, Naveen Patnaik.

A local NGO, Gram Vikas, helped him all through in fighting for his legal rights. The grievance cell of the CM wrote in November 2006 to the district collector to provide him a job in a month's time. The CM’s order passed from the collector to the BDO and then to the sarpanch. But Kailash and the 250 other work seekers did not get any job or unemployment allowance.

In June 2007 he attended a workshop on NREGS in Bhubaneshwar, the state capital, which rekindled his hopes. Inspired by the discussions there and the media attention he got during the workshop, he wrote an application to the then state project coordinator, NREGA, R N Dash (who is the secretary-cum-commissioner, Panchayati Raj department) about his right to get a job and unemployment allowance. Social activists who handed over his application to Dash, the seniormost bureaucrat in the state for NREGA matters, were assured that his case would be heard in 15 days as per the law. But two-and-a-half years have passed and there has been no action on Kailash’s application.

During the same time, Kailash took recourse to another strong law, the RTIA, and asked for information from the public information officer (PIO) of the block and the office of the collector, on the progress made on his application for unemployment allowance. Under the RTI law, he should have got the information he sought within 30 days, but he got no response from the block office, though the district level officials had forwarded the RTI application to the block.

As provided for under the law, Kailash next filed a complaint with the state information commission (SIC), an independent body under the RTI law to penalise erring officials who violate the RTI law. But the SIC started hearing his case only a year after he filed the appeal! The first hearing was in July 2008. The second hearing was fixed for November 2008, but in the meantime, Kailash went missing (on August 6, 2008).

FIR yielded little result

When Kailash did not turn up for some days his wife Bauri Nayak and other family members filed a first information report (FIR) at the local Tarasingh police station. Not satisfied with the action of the inspector-in-charge, Niranjan Patra, Bauri Nayak made a complaint to the superintendent of police of Ganjam district, Nitinjeet Singh. The local daily Anupam Bharat reported Inspector Patra as saying: “Kailash is a fraud. He was cheating the villagers. The villagers might have killed him. Investigation is on...” (Anupam Bharat, August 28, 2008).

Kailash’s family and local social activists fighting his case allege that Inspector Patra was not doing enough to trace Kailash. The inspector told a visiting four-member fact-finding team headed by Rajkishor Mishra, state adviser to the Right to Food Commission of the Supreme Court, that he has made all possible efforts to search for Kailash. He and his staff have searched jungles, hills and everywhere and asked people about his whereabouts but with no success. He said he had given Kailash’s photograph and details to the Criminal Intelligence Gazette, which circulates details of missing persons to all police stations. Sources suggest that the inspector was prompted to make these attempts only after being directed to do so by SP Nitinjeet Singh.

Regretting the inaction of the administration, Joe Madiath of Gram Vikas, the NGO that guided Kailash in his fight says, “Kailash Nayak, who took a rights-based approach for himself and for the most marginalised people in a remote part of the state, has disappeared without trace. Almost nothing is done to conclusively prove anything either way. It is a sad affair.”

Block officials furnish false information

Since the hearing of Kailash’s RTI appeal by the state information commission would have resulted in a penalty on officials in the Jagannath Prasad block, the officials started playing their own game to wriggle out of the situation. In the first hearing, for which Kailash was present, the Commission ordered the BDO, the first appellate authority, to inquire and furnish the information to Kailash immediately. Before the second hearing, the BDO did submit its inquiry report to the Commission where it claimed that the information sought by Kailash had been provided. A scrutiny of all the documents of the case suggests, prima facie, that the BDO has furnished misleading information to the Commission taking advantage of the fact that Kailash is missing and there would be nobody to counter the BDO’s claim.

In a supplementary submission made to the Commission on March 19, 2009 by the group that has been fighting Kailash Nayak’s case, it was alleged that there is some discrepancy between the interim order of the Commission given to the BDO on July 18, 2008 and the inquiry report submitted by the BDO on September 20, 2008.

The submission reads “…On one hand the State Information Commission (SIC) order reads that the Public Information Officer (PIO) was not in a position to explain the facts, whereas the Inquiry report of the BDO says that on the same day of the hearing, information was handed over to Kailash Nayak in the Commission office…”

The supplementary submission makes other allegations: “According to the order the BDO should have completed the inquiry by August 18, 2008, but it did so on September 20, 2008.” It goes on to point out that in the second hearing of the case on November 5, 2008, nobody from the block was present despite the orders of the SIC, which has the power of a civil court to issue summons. The submission infers, “Have the authorities taken advantage of the fact that Kailash is missing and there is none to represent him and therefore the whole case has been taken lightly? Has the Commission also been taken for granted by the concerned authority of the block? Can the officials take a court’s order for granted like this?”

Do pro-people legislations work for the poor?

Section 25 of NREGA provides for penalty of up to Rs 1,000 for any authority who fails to discharge his/her responsibility under the law. But none of the above-mentioned officials -- BDO, collector, state project director of NREGA -- all of whom have taken the law for granted, have been penalised. Already three-and-a-half years have passed since the application for work was made, but the so-called progressive and strong provisions of the law have not worked for Kailash: no work, no unemployment allowance, no penalties for the erring authorities yet. Even the intervention of the chief minister’s Grievance Cell could not make the law work!

And what can be said about the RTIA, another path-breaking law? In the final hearing on May 12, 2009, the SIC refused to take note of the formal allegation of furnishing of false information by the block authorities, on the grounds that an activist has no locus standi to argue for Kailash without authorisation from him! It did not say how a missing man can authorise anyone to argue his case. It could have fixed responsibility on the officers for failing in their duty, but it chose not to. Justice, already delayed for Kailash, was finally denied and the case was disposed of.

A compendium prepared by Anish Vanaik on NREGA-related violence suggests that in several other cases in the country activists who have been spreading awareness about NREGA have been eliminated by vested interests such as the contractor-official-politician nexus. The murders of Lalit Mehta in Jharkhand in May 2008, Narayan Hareka in Orissa in May 2008 and Kamlesh Yadav also in Jharkhand in June 2008 have made news. Nobody can tell for sure what fate Kailash has met with but his activism had certainly created unease in some official and unofficial quarters who had taken the law for granted.

The authorities at every level, from the panchayat to the chief minister’s Grievance Cell and the state information commission, knowingly or unknowingly, have done their bit to defeat the objectives of the well-intentioned laws and a poor person’s fight to get his rights.

(Pradeep Baisakh is a development journalist based in Orissa)


Infochange News & Features, February 2010

Child labour in Gujarat's cottonseed farms

This article came in India Together (http://www.indiatogether.org/) on 9th Feb 2010

http://www.indiatogether.org/2010/feb/hrt-cseed.htm


Child labour in Gujarat's cottonseed farms

Labour contractors and large landowners continue to employ children, often exposing them to vulnerable situations. Extreme poverty in Rajasthan's tribal districts fuels the practice. Pradeep Baisakh reports.

 

09 February 2010 - In 2006 July a group of 19 adolescent boys and girls from Kherwada block of Udaipur district were hired through a middleman to work in a cottonseed farm in Mehsana district of Gujarat. There, according to the older girls in the group, the owner of the farm and his partners sexually harassed three of them. When the girls resisted, some of the group members including one girl were severally beaten and thrown out of the field. With no money in their pockets, the group had to walk back for three days and two nights to reach home.

 Approximately one lakh children from the tribal-dominated southern districts of Rajasthan are trafficked to northern Gujarat to work in cottonseed fields every year. For many years now, there have been reports of sexual harassment, physical and mental torture, long hours and harsh conditions of work, low wages, as well as unsafe and unhygienic living conditions on these farms. Every year there have been cases of deaths of children; in 2009 there were as many as 11 such reports. Some of these are from snake bites and exposure to pesticides; but more gruesome than these are the rape-and-murder reports.

High incidence of child labour

India is the biggest cotton producing country in the world. Three states - Gujarat, Maharastra and Andhra Pradesh - contribute three-fourths of the total cotton production in the country. Gujarat is also among the leading cottonseed producing states in the country. Since much of the work in cottonseed farms is carried out manually, a large workforce is engaged in the work, primarily cross-pollination of seeds. It is estimated that about 2.5 lakh labourers are employed in about 25,000 acres of farm under cottonseed production in the state.

In 2007, Dakshin Rajasthan Mazdoor Union (DRMU) conducted a study in cottonseed farms in Gujarat, and found that about one-third of the total workforce is below 14 years of age, and another 42 per cent in the age group of 15-18. A little less than half of these children, in both age groups, are girls. Children are also employed in other work in the cotton production chain i.e. in cotton farms and in ginning factories. As a result of mounting pressure from rights activists, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan have both accepted that children are employed in their farms, and promised steps to correct this. The Gujarat government, however, has yet to even accept the fact.

Recruitment by middlemen

Cottonseed farming is carried out in the northern districts of Gujarat - Sabarkantha, Banaskantha, Mehasan and Gandhinagar - by a small number of farmers with very large land-holdings. Labourers in these farms are employed through a system of middlemen, who operate as labour contractors. A two-tier contractor system prevails; the bigger contractors are direct agents of the farmers. The smaller contractors, on the other hand, are members of the same community as the labourers.

[Box: About 80 per cent of the labourers are tribals, mostly Bhils, Grasias and others from Dungerpur, Udaipur, Banswara and elsewhere in southern Rajasthan, while a small portion are from Gujarat itself.]

These small contractors bring the children and adult labourers of their community to work in the farms. Both sets of contractors get their commissions for supplying labourers. Payment is made in advance to the middlemen, who then give it in turn to the labourers (or to the parents of the children, in the case of child labourers). This system has ensured the sustenance of the labour supply. By taking the advance money, the labourer makes an unwritten 'commitment of bondage' to stay in the field throughout the season.

Cross pollination generally takes place between July and October every year. The children are loaded in vehicles and transported from Rajasthan to Gujarat at night to evade the eyes of the law. At the workplace, the child has to work for about 10-12 hours a day. All children stay in the farm under open tents or make-shift houses, where they are susceptible to snake bites and other such risks. Generally both boys and girls stay in common accommodations. Due to this unsafe living condition, the adolescent girls have been subject to sexual harassment.

In two-thirds of the cases, the child is sent to work by parents against his/her will. The children therefore miss their homes and their education. The children are usually given roughly two-thirds of the daily minimum wage; they get about daily wages of 70-75 rupees against the statutory minimum wages of 100 rupees for eight hours of work. Several laws like the Inter State Migrant Workmen Act, Minimum Wages Act and Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, Bonded labour (Abolition) Act etc. are violated routinely.

Forced migration

The tribal areas of Rajasthan are highly backward districts; the hilly terrain in these areas makes cultivation very difficult. Continuous drought also makes agriculture an unreliable and unsustainable occupation. Sudhir Katyal of DRMU says, "migration is a major means to livelihood for people here, who go to other states to work in cottonseed farming, cotton ginning industries and brick kilns. About two-thirds of their income comes from the work done outside."

During my interaction with the villagers of Paldeval Panchayat in Dungarpur district, the villagers could not answer why they send their children to cottonseed fields in stead of the adults going to work, though they admitted that it's not a good practice. The poverty of people forces them to fall into the shrewd design developed over a period of time to attract and employ children in these farms.

At the workplace, the adolescent boys and girls can freely associate with each other; middlemen rely on this to entice the children to come to farms through 'peer group mobilisation'. In some cases the children leave their homes and come to work in farms even without the knowledge of the parents. Children are preferred over the adults in cottonseed farms for two reasons. The primary reason is that children are manipulable and can be made to work for lesser wages; also, some employers claim "the height of the cottonseed plants makes it easier for the children to do the pollination rather than the adults."

 DRMU's intervention

The intervention by DRMU began in 2006. The local middlemen, who hail from the community, were unionised and helped to bargain with the big contractors and landowners to stop child labour and raise wages. The transportation of children was highlighted in the media, and also found good support form the local administration, and the National Committee on Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR). They took the help of the police to start check gates on the routes used by the contractors to take the children to Gujarati farms, and succeeded in preventing some children form being taken out.

But gradually the union faced a backlash from the mighty landowning Seths of Gujarat, and by all those who stand to benefit from the child trafficking. There were instances of murderous attacks on the promoters of the union, like Madan Vaishnav. The small contractors also gradually withdrew their cooperation from the union due to pressure from the big contractors and the Seths. Some parents also began opposing the union, as its position and activism hampered their income from child labour. Poverty in the area is high. In Dungerpur district, the hundred days of work under NREGA is not sufficient for the people to stop sending their children to work.

Sudhir Katyal of the Union says "Unionising the small contractors was an anti-strategy. Initially that was the feasible strategy as one cannot unionise the children. Now we have to organise the parents and inculcate in them the concepts of child rights." Now the grassroots activists like Karolal from Dungarpur and others like him organise meetings in the villages and convince parents not to send their children for work.


MNC seed companies

[A joint study conducted by OECD Watch, the India Committee on Netherlands and others in 2007 suggests more than 4 lakh children are made to work in India in hybrid cottonseed production. The child labour in these farms first came to light towards the end of last century.

Above: Ramila 14, Hanju 14 and Deepak, 13 from Dungarpur district worked in Cottonseed farms in Gujarat.]

With the introduction of BT hybrid seed in 2002 the cotton yields rose, and more farmers turned to cotton farming. The production, procurement and distribution of the cottonseed is closely controlled by a handful of private companies by a system of company-appointed organisers and agents, who distribute the parent seed to the farmers for production of cottonseed. The farmers have to sign contracts with the seed companies to return all their produce to them in lieu of getting the parent seed at a pre-decided price. This monopoly of the seed companies increased the demand for cheap labour, and correspondingly, the incidence of child labour also rose.

In recent years, research studies on child labour in the region have brought the spotlight on seed companies, in particular the multinational Monsanto and its Indian partners, in the production of cottonseed. Mansanto, in its human rights policy, mentions that it would not tolerate any form of exploitative child labour in line with standards of ILO conventions. Activists allege that although the company has acknowledged the presence of child labour in the cottonseed farms (particularly in Andhra Pradesh), it has done a precious little to address the situation. Other seed companies like Mahyco and Nuziveedu also face similar accusations of ignoring child labour on their farms.

What can be done?

A multi-pronged approach may be needed for addressing the issue. The role of the seed companies and their impact on child labour should be probed, and necessary regulations adopted. The wider issue of seed policy also needs to be looked into. Intervention by both the Central and State governments is needed to address the economic conditions in the tribal belt of Rajasthan, including by increasing the entitlements under NREGA and bringing all families in these backward districts under the coverage of the Targeted Public Distribution System.

Other steps are also needed: strengthening the implementation of the child nutrition schemes like ICDS; making enough arrangements for the education of the children under the recently enacted Right to Education legislation; and stricter implementation of the child labour prohibition law. ⊕

Pradeep Baisakh is a freelance journalist based in Orissa.

Works unwell

This piece came in Down To Earth (Corss Current section) in Dec 15, 2009 issue

Link: http://www.downtoearth.org.in/node/2603 

Works unwell

Employment guarantee scheme workers in Rajasthan do not get their dues

“Puro kaam, par puro daam nehin milto,” says Hodri Bai of Morthala village in Rajasthan’s Sirohi district. In the Grasia dialect this means, “We do full work, but do not get full payment”. The problem has plagued the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Rajasthan ever since its inception in 2006. It’s an ironical situation considering that Rajasthan pioneered the nation on the right to work scheme.

People in Sirohi district complain that fixing wages is an arbitrary affair. Officials, usually a junior engineer of the Public Works Department, fix wages on basis of work done by the total group of workers at a site—an individual worker’s output is not considered.
This practice has led to various problems. Since people themselves cannot measure the work they have done, they cannot correlate it with the wages they should get.

In most cases the payment is far less than the minimum wages. During the first half of 2006, people were paid Rs 20-30 a day instead of the stipulated minimum of Rs 73.

Initially, the scheme also fostered a worker’s aristocracy. “In a group of 50, about 10 people, who were close to the supervisor, would come to the worksite only for the sake of attendance and go away. But they were paid wages,” Manju Kahanar a worker of Janchetna Sansthan, a non-profit working on the issue of right to work, told this writer.

Kahanar’s organization was in the forefront of a movement that began in 2007 to improve the quality of the supervisor’s work.

Labourers are now divided into a group of five; work target for each day is fixed and the workers are paid after completing the assigned task. These interventions did lead to an increase in the worker’s output and there was increase in their earnings. Non-serious workers disappeared and there was more discipline. But Kahanar still believes there is no effective mechanism to check worker’s slackness. She calls this “the hangover of the drought relief works”.

In March 2008, the minimum wages were revised to Rs 100. This did improve matters somewhat. But in Rajasthan, the minimum wages are actually the maximum wages. So a worker will not be given more than Rs 100.

The supervisor—called the mate—does not let people work more than what will earn them Rs 100. The workers are fine with this arrangement but the situation gets complicated because the overall in-charge at a site—the junior engineers—do not accept the supervisor’s calculations.

They believe workers actually do less work than calculated by the mate. So after the overall in-charge has had his say, the workers end up getting less than Rs 100. In a conversation with this writer, Rajasthan’s one-time nregs director, Manju Rajpal, admitted to the discrepancy. “There is as much as 20 per cent discrepancy in what the mates measure and what the junior engineers do.”

Workers are caught in this tussle between the supervisor and the junior engineer. They are willing to work more to earn Rs 100 but the supervisor does not permit them to.

Shape up

Then there is a paucity of officers to measure the workers’ output when works on the employment guarantee scheme are at full steam: usually May and June.

We are taking steps to improve matters, Rajpal told this writer. Junior technical assistants have now been asked to take up some of the junior engineers’ employment guarantee scheme tasks, but this change has improved matters only marginally.

The writer is a freelance journalist in Orissa, currently working on NREGS. The trip to Rajasthan was sponsored by Action Aid India