UDAIPUR, Rajasthan (The Tribune, Chandigarh), April 6, 2008:
For Bhagwati Bera, whose village Bari falls in Makdadav panchayat in Rajasthan’s Udaipur district, eating a square meal at the end of the day has suddenly become a reality, courtesy the launching of a scheme under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) in the area.Women labourers employed under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) scheme
Bera is an old man like most of the members of the labour force at the site. Old women and a sprinkling of young women form the remaining personnel of the workforce engaged in constructing the 2-km-long road to link Bari with Idmal. The NREGA work does not attract able-bodied men of the villages, who work elsewhere to earn better wages.
The Government of India's Press Information Bureau (PIB) had flown a media team to Udaipur for showing the work carried out for poor people under the Central scheme. Union Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh is of the view that NREGA has made a beginning in Udaipur. Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and a health programme were the other subjects on the agenda of the organisers.
At Bari, where zila parishad executive engineer K L Sisodia took the media team, 33 people were working. The workers are getting paid at the rate of Rs 72 per day, the minimum daily wage in Rajasthan. A majority of the workers at the site are making around Rs 60 daily, as they are being paid according to their output. A labourer can work under the NREGA scheme for maximum 100 days in a year. It, thus, ensures an income of Rs 6,000 annually and helps elderly villagers to not become a burden on their families.
At Salana, near Bari, the rocky soil of Rajasthan was being dug for making a well. The workforce consisted of eight men, including the landowner himself, and a bull. Everybody is getting paid for the work, including the landowner. As many as 428 such wells are being dug in Udaipur district. Zila parishad personnel first open up a crater with explosives, and the labourers take on from there. Use of explosives at a later stage is avoided in deference to the NREGA guideline prohibiting the use of machine tools for any project.
Small dams called anikets have been constructed for crop harvestingSmall dams have also been made at slopes and at points where water could be brought for harvesting. Called anikets, some of these dams must be quite deep as reports of two suicides in two such dams were reported in the morning papers on March 8. Villagers said instead of just one crop, they would be now able to sow two or three crops because of the opportunity of irrigation provided by the dams.
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Copyright : The Tribune Trust, 2006
