Body blow for last hope of rural India

Mahatma Gandhi truly said that ‘India lives in its villages,’ while stressing on the fact that the heart, soul and future of the nation resided in its rural communities and not so much in its cities. But rural India is no paradise which those, who have travelled in those parts, know pretty well. From village to village, from shanty to shanty, it’s abject poverty which prevails with families fighting a daily battle to keep the pot boiling so that their kids have at least two square meals a day.

Economic exploitation, caste exclusion, gender disparities, unemployment and illiteracy all make a deadly mix in the ‘heart of India.’ So as rural India fought an uphill battle with poverty, starvation and disease with health and economic infrastructure  woeful to say the least, the  Congress-led UPA government in 2005 came up with the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). It was expressly intended to provide a legal guarantee of 100 days of wage employment for rural households willing to do unskilled manual labour, thus enhancing livelihood security.

It was a godsend for the rural masses with MGNREGA considered the best way to reduce gender, class and caste differences and also ensure that the lack of social protection, persistent under-employment and financial exclusion were tackled in the best manner possible by ensuring meaningful wages landed in every worker’s pocket. Over the course of 20 years, MGNREGA has proved to be a lifeline for those who were fighting a daily battle for existence, with gainful employment provided to them as they went to work on projects like roads, dams and rural infrastructure.

Lives blossomed and the kids could now go to school as their parents were assured a modest sum as wages. Now, comes the rude shock. The corporate friendly BJP-led NDA government at the Centre is set to turn all that topsy turvy by coming up with a bill to replace MGNREGA which has not surprisingly, run into stiff opposition in parliament. For one, the name ‘Mahatma Gandhi,’ who epitomised every Indian’s yearning for a truly meaningful existence, has disappeared from the new bill which has been named ‘Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission.

pposition members are crying hoarse that the bill may lead to the exclusion of large sections of rural households with employment even likely to be suspended during the peak agricultural season. New rules are being brought in mandating digital attendance at the workplace among other norms and all these are likely to cause enormous difficulty to the rural populace, caught in a daily struggle to live, contends the Opposition.

In a nation were roughly two thirds of the population live in rural areas, and urban places including town and cities are at best ‘oases of development’ in an otherwise bleak landscape,  India, as has been argued by many experts, will see a sea change in its fortunes only when the tears have been wiped from the face of the last Indian. The MGNREGA was a small but significant step towards that objective and now, there are lurking doubts that the BJP-led government, with its ‘unabashed love’ for big business and corporates, will deliver a body blow to the scheme by tinkering with it.