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Journalism of Courage
DIWALI is not generally a special time for Dungarpur. Dominated by tribals, who constitute 65.14 per cent of the population, the Rajasthan district has grown used to living with the 8216;underdeveloped8217; and 8216;most backward8217; tags. Regular employment is hard to come by; migration is endemic, but does little to better long-term fortunes.
This year, though, Dungarpur8217;s Devilal Hujaji Ghoghra fulfilled his life-long hope of a pucca house. And Soma Amra, for the first time since he can remember, bought enough foodgrains for three months.
Check out the figures: About 50 per cent of all the families in the district now have at least one member employed under the scheme, at least 25 per cent have two. While 10 of the 25 states to launch the scheme are still registering names, Dungarpur has not only launched several work projects but has actually completed a few of them. Till date, Rs 91.91 crore has been distributed as wages, while more than 50 per cent of the Rs 235 crore allotted for tribals under the project has been utilised between February and September.
As commendably, all this has been achieved without any extra staff and with systematic transparency. More than 1.64 lakh families have been provided employment, but till date there have been only 120 complaints.
Well-begun is8230;
THE numbers make easy reading, but putting them there wasn8217;t a cakewalk. According to district officials, Rajpal began work on the NREGS even before the Centre announced a date for the launch, downloading the draft of the scheme from the Net in November last year and holding the first meeting on the subject on November 28, 2005.
8220;At that first meeting, she emphasised the need for a well-drafted awareness campaign to ensure the tribals make the most of the scheme. We started work on it right away,8221; says Mohan Lal Sharma, chief executive officer of the district.
Even as they awaited the official intimation, over December 2005 and January 2006, Rajpal conducted meetings and organised workshops for senior officials, followed by similar workshops at the panchayat level. That was the easy part: The challenge lay in getting the message across to the closed societies of the tribals.
Rajpal, her officials say, took a personal interest in the campaign, regularly visiting the various tribal groups across the 237 gram panchayats in the district. She participated in local events and tried to join in the social gatherings so that the tribals would open up to her.
8220;Rajpal would interact with the tribals as much as she could, which helped in bringing the tribals to workshops and sessions on the EGS. Initially, it seemed like an uphill task, but the tribals soon began trusting us and showing an interest,8221; says Mahesh Sharma, project manager.
Ratri-sabhas and training sessions followed. Local folk artists were roped in to prepare and sing songs detailing the scheme; cassettes were distributed among auto-drivers and in panchayat buildings, which played them over a month. Now all the panchayat buildings display information on the scheme, along with phone numbers for Rajpal and other officials.
Simultaneously, the authorities conducted BPL verifications and also conducted a detailed study on local requirement and the populace8217;s priorities. They also determined the job-skills and assessed the numbers of skilled and unskilled workers available.
8220;By January, when the Centre announced that the scheme would be launched on February 2, the groundwork had been completed and there was a fair amount of awareness among the locals. Half our battle was won then,8217;8217; says Rajpal.
Local Flavours
BUT Rajpal and her team didn8217;t sit back in anticipation of success. To ensure a large turnout on February 2, the first day of registrations, the collector fell back on local customs: She asked every sarpanch of every village to visit the BPL tribals and invite them for registration after handing over a handful of yellow ricegrains.
8220;It8217;s a local custom: When an invitation for a wedding or other joyous occasions is accompanied by yellow ricegrains, it obliges the invitee to attend,8221; says Rajpal. The effort paid off: 60 per cent of the total registration was done on the first day itself.
On the ground, the administration ordered water and soil conservation works first. This included various repairs of waterbodies, construction of check dams, canal clean-ups et al. All these projects were done at the panchayat level.
In April this year, the Astha Sansthan and the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan MKSS conducted a social audit involving around 600 people.
They found that in almost every village, people were aware of their entitlement to 100 days of work a year, as promised under the NREGS.
The audit revealed that despite some problems, there was a significant improvement in employment, and the local administration was giving the issue highest priority. Auditors discovered muster rolls that showed no evidence of manipulation and also found that 80 per cent of the sign-ups were women8212;a phenomenon that may have as much to do with Rajpal8217;s visible involvement with the project as with the fact that local men usually migrate in search of work.
8220;Though there were a few discrepancies over wages and a few other complaints, over all the social audit and the participants boosted our morale for better work,8221; says Rajpal, who continues to monitor the implementation of the scheme.
The district authorities are now planning an impact study of the implementation of the scheme in the district.
Though the projects were affected during the monsoon the district received heavy rainfall this year, several new projects8212;such as the development of link roads in association with the Public Works Department8212;have been launched and the registration for work is on in full swing again.
8220;This scheme is like a boon for us. Never before could we find work in our district but now things have changed. If this continues, our brothers and fathers will never have to go away from home for work and even we will manage to earn some extra money,8217;8217; says Varsha Manat, one of the workers at the Upper Ghodi talab in the district.
Lighting up their lives
Hardship is a habit for Dungarpur8217;s tribals. But work in their own villages is scripting a new story
EIGHT months after the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme took off in Dungarpur, it brought unforeseen rewards into the poorest tribal homes of the district: Sweets during Diwali. Some families bought new clothes, others actually had money spare for diyas.
A little over 40, Devilal Hujaji Ghoghra saw a dream come true when he plastered the walls of his mud hut with cement. 8220;I worked as a mason under the NREGS for more than 70 days and earned an extra Rs 7,000,8221; says the skilled worker. 8220;That8217;s how I managed to fulfill this long-cherished ambition of mine. We celebrated Diwali like never before.8221;
Before NREGS came to the district, says Devilal, local tribals had no option but to move to Gujarat or Madhya Pradesh in search of work. 8220;There was no work here, except for some seasonal farming. But running two establishments8212;one in Gujarat and one here8212;was expensive and ate into whatever we earned,8221; he says.
Poor and uneducated, the most the tribals could hope for work as unskilled labour. Construction work was hard, but usually earned just about enough to meet daily expenses. And for those who could not migrate, the sole annual source of sustenance was the earnings from seasonal farming, which was never much.
For the first time in living memory, the festival of lights saw actual celebration in this impoverished district. Says Huresh Dhura, mother to three young children, 8220;Till February this year, my husband, who works as a daily wager in Idar Gujarat, was the only earning member. Now that I am earning too8212;I work at a nearby lake under the NREGS8212;we managed to get new clothes and sweets for our children this Diwali. Usually, it8217;s either one or the other.8221;
Soma Amra, whose family responsibilities made it impossible for him to move out in search of work, has seen his aged parents and young children go without food for days in past years when the droughts were particularly bad. This Diwali, he brought home enough foodgrains to last a few days.
8220;For years, we could only buy as much food as we needed for a single day. But after working for 50 days this year, I actually bought enough foodgrains to last us three months,8221; says a happy Soma. 8220;We have kept it for a rainy day.8221;
Single Mother, Singular Officer
Manju Rajpal lives the ideas8212;and the ideals
STRANGELY for an officer who is changing the face of Dungarpur, it wasn8217;t the state of the country that drove Manju Rajpal to the administrative services. It was the fate of its children.
So, despite all her professional responsibilities, Rajpal, in her early 30s and single, has adopted three baby girls. While two of them live with her, her sister8212;posted in Udaipur as a Rajasthan Administrative Services officer8212;takes care of the third.
8220;It is my way of giving back to society. Some donate money or things and then forget about it, but my sister and I wanted to commit ourselves completely to whatever responsibility we took up,8221; says Rajpal. 8220;My daughters8212;two-year-old Mohana, 18-month-old Meera and 16-month-old Gauri8212;are part of the family even to my parents and relatives.8221;
According to Rajpal, it was while she was working with the Social Welfare Department after clearing her RAS exams in 1996 that she realised that children who grew up in orphanages were rarely completely accepted by society. 8220;The children8217;s desire to have a family and to belong is never fulfilled either. That8217;s why I decided to adopt, rather than set up an institution,8221; she says.
The third of four daughters of a middle-class business family, Rajpal says she never had any inclination for the civil services except for her ambition to do something for children. 8220;It8217;s something that just came naturally to me, since I love children,8221; says Rajpal, who cleared her IAS exams in 2000, ranking sixth.
Rajpal and her Udaipur-based sister Anju are part of a 30-member group of likeminded people, some of whom have adopted children on the same family principle, while others 8220;give back8221; to society in whichever ways they can. 8220;We get together occasionally and act as one big support structure for the children. A child should never feel he or she does not have anyone to turn to, we are all their uncles and aunts,8221; she explains.
A woman with strong will-power and stronger ideas for a better society, Rajpal says she looked on NREGS as an opportunity. 8220;Dungarpur is my first posting. I8217;d been there for close to a year when NREGS happened. I consider it a gift with which I could help my people. Often, projects get stuck for the lack of a few lakhs of rupees. NREGS makes it possible to generate funds and launch projects according to the specific needs of the people,8217;8217; she says.
For all that, Rajpal refuses to take credit for the successful implementation of the scheme in the district. 8220;It was team effort. As a leader, I was expected to guide and so I did that. But it was the participation and help of officials of all sectors of administration which made things quite easy and the way they are today,8217;8217; she states.
Spoken like a true leader.
