Seema and Prakash Michael—Spandan Samaj Seva Samiti M.P., India
By setting up rural labor associations to monitor the transparent and effective implementation of new National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Seema and Prakash Michael are creating a grassroots democratic process that improves food security and rural labor relations in India.
The NREGA is the first legal entitlement that grants poor unskilled daily wage workers the right to work, guaranteeing a minimum 100 days of employment. The scale of operations, money involved, and government machinery make the Act vulnerable to corruption and mismanagement. The NREGA seeks to provide social security to the rural poor through the guarantee of a minimum of 100 days of work a year, creating local natural resource and infra-structural assets at a minimum wage of Rs 60 daily. Additionally, it stipulates other provisions such as worksite facilities, unemployment allowance for inability to offer work opportunities, and reservation quota for women workers. One member of every rural household is entitled to participate in the scheme. The central government is funding this scheme with the states expected to contribute 10 per cent of the cost. The cost in the first year alone is expected to be around Rs 15,000 crore (approx. $3.3 billion).
Seema and Prakash, a husband-and-wife team, are bringing together rural workers, who are usually considered “unorganized” or “casual” workers but are now recognized as employees, into a new kind of collective in which they can negotiate for better treatment.
They are equipping the wage workers with the wherewithal to create standards of employment; seek legal redress for corrupt delivery mechanisms; legitimately claim compensation and penalties; ensure food and health security through standardization of wages; take advantage of specific provisions in the Act aimed at women, children and the disabled; participate as a collective force in local self-government; and drive development through the formulation and implementation of plans for infrastructure development works to be taken up under NREGA. By opening up a new window to livelihood security, Seema and Prakash are also seeking to check distress migration on the one hand, and paving the way to relieve urban areas of an exploding migratory population of unskilled workers on the other.
As a legal entity, the collective also protects the wage workers against archaic state laws. For example, there have been instances when poor workers have been arrested for daring to demand their rightful wages from petty government officials who have taken advantage of a law which pertains to the disruption of official work. As an organized, legal body, workers can now demand their rights without fear of such unfair state action. Sustained campaigning by the workers’ groups also has the potential of regularizing wages in the private sector. The challenge lies in ensuring that corruption does not eviscerate an act that could potentially change the face of rural India and help rid it of poverty, disease and indebtedness. If successful, it could be a pioneering means of overcoming the obstacles encountered by the world’s poorest and give a new lease of life to the labor movement in India.
The NREGA is currently under implementation in 200 districts in the country and will be extended to all the 600 districts in the country in five years. Beginning their work in the villages of the Khandwa district of central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, Seema and Prakash are simultaneously working in 18 districts through a network of partners, drawn from organizations engaged in the nationwide Right to Food campaign. They are confident of organizing the 67-lakh unskilled workers in the entire state in three years’ time and hopeful of their model’s replication throughout the country in five years’ time through inter-state alliances.
Currently there are wide discrepancies, with the state of Madhya Pradesh settling for the minimum government-directed Rs 60 a day while other states like Maharashtra and Kerala have raised it to anything between Rs 80 and Rs 108 a day.
The final blueprint for the state registered bodies is in the making. Members are required to hold job cards issued by the government and must have done at least 10 days of work under NREGA to qualify for membership. Seema and Prakash are also using another recently-enacted historic Act to monitor whether NREGA is working—the Right to Information Act, taken to the grassroots by Ashoka Fellow and Magsaysay Awardee Arvind Kejriwal. This Act provides citizens with the right to access information from public authorities. For example, workers under NREGA can now ask for information about labor regulations and entitlements; raise questions about any lapses in the implementation of the provisions in the Act; and demand answers to why penalties have gone unpaid. In short, ensure quick and fair justice, at low cost, for the poor.
Educating the workers on the provisions embodied in the Act and how to use it is the most crucial component of Seema and Prakash’s work. Demonstration of the uses of the Act is important and they are doing so by helping them to demand their rights such as setting up of drinking water facilities and sheltered areas at worksites and crèche facilities for children under the age of six, and avail of the provisions for jobs on a priority basis for mothers with malnourished children. Of special concern are the rights of women with regard to equal wages and the disabled within the scheme. Their research has shown that economically empowering women has a direct impact on the health and nutrition of families. Among other marginalized groups, they have already started organizing people afflicted with leprosy and ostracized by society, to demand their rights under NREGA.
Networked with all the organizations working on the Right to Food campaign, the two are convinced that once the unskilled workers’ model is set up in full form and structure in all the 18 districts they are working in currently, it will not take time to spread across the state and the country. The next step, as they see it, is to increase the scope of the Act by way of standardizing minimum wages to coincide with the actual calculated amount required to prevent malnutrition and step up the number of days of guaranteed employment. They are now in the process of identifying strategic state and national partners for the proposed workers’ associations.
It was their work with the Dalit and tribal women of the community that gave Seema and Prakash the courage to demand the stipulated minimum wages from the panchayats. The following struggle, which made the couple vulnerable to physical assaults and death threats, culminated in the state being directed by the Commissioners of the Supreme Court to introduce remedial measures. It was also the time when Prakash and Seema decided to focus on the problem of food security by participating in the Right to Food Campaign. They recognized the opportunity offered by NREGA and lost no time in setting up the mechanisms to ensure its full and effective implementation.
