Rural Action Component.docx 2

VILLAGE STUDY SEGMENT (MRM 2009)

Rural Action Component

To create awareness about the NREGA among the people of kyariya gram panchayat of Abu Road of Sirohi district of Rajasthan state

Host organization: Jan Chetna Sansthan 2008

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1. The Host Organization …………………………………………………………….. 1.1 Key business processes of the organization…………………………………………. 2. NREGA ………………………………………………………………………………. 3. When and Where …………………………………………………………………… 4. Aims and targets ………………………………………………………………. 5. Activity………………………………………………………………………. 5.1 Identification of problem regarding the NREGA ………………………..

5.2 Scheduling the meetings ………………………………………………………… 5.3 Conducting a meeting 5.4 Awareness about the form filling process……………. ……… 5.5 Meeting with Post man 5.6 Meeting with BDO…………………………………….. 6

Achievements…………………………………………

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Key success factor……………………………………..

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Key learning………………………………………………

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Experience as a grassroots worker……………………………….

Rural Action Component

To create awareness about the NREGA among the people of kyariya gram panchayat of Abu Road of Sirohi district of Rajasthan state

1. The Host Organisation- Jan Chetna Sansthan

Jan Chetna Sansthan (JCS) is an organization working for generating awareness among the people, leading to their empowerment. It was formed, in 1989, by a group of social activists and development professionals. The constituency of JCS is the tribal’s and women who constitute the most marginalized, disadvantaged and exploited section of the society in the South Rajasthan.

1.1 Key business processes of the organisation:

Jan chetna sansthan is a right based NGO working for the range of issues in the constituency which consist of marginalised tribals. Some of the Key areas are mentioned below: ✔ Working for institution building- village level CBOs like Bhakar Bhithrote Adivasi Manch are made for mobilisation of the people. ✔ Capacity building through training and information dissemination.

✔ Awareness about government policies and Rights. Example NREGA, Tribal Self Rule, PESA act, Right to information, Right to Food etc. ✔ Collective Action to ensure the rights. ✔ Microcredit services through SHG formation and Bank linkage. ( A cooperative named Adivasi Bachat Avam Saakh Sangathan has been started under this program )

2. About the NREGA

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005, or NREGA, was brought into force by the Union government in February 2006. The Act is far-reaching in its intent and scope. It is the first nation-wide employment scheme that guarantees employment legally to India’s rural population. Naturally, it has generated intense speculation and interest. The NREGA is being implemented in 200 most backward districts of 27 states in the country. It guarantees 100 days of unskilled jobs per rural household. More importantly, the Act aims at eradication of extreme poverty and at making villages self-sustaining through productive assets creation (such as water tanks and soil conservation works). This is meant to regenerate the rural natural resource base, which in turn will result in sustainable livelihoods for residents.

The Act puts Panchayati Raj Institutions (the third tier of government in India i.e the village level) at the helm of affairs -- beginning with identifying the eligible households to planning the works to be undertaken. The government has referred to it as an “Act of the people, by the people, and for the people”. The NREGA has certainly come at a crucial time, when rural economy in the country is facing complete collapse due to myopic policies. Many studies on rural economy point to the erosion of livelihoods in Indian villages as the main driver behind rural unemployment. Efforts to salvage the situation through numerous poverty alleviation schemes have not helped. Thus, the NREGA faces a two-pronged challenge: the immediate one of addressing the skyrocketing unemployment crisis in rural areas, and a longer-term one of contributing to village economy in a sustained manner.

Effective implementation of the Act would require planning labour-intensive works for the needy poor on a continuous and sustained basis. These works must build the right kind of assets to promote development of local/regional economy. To ensure that the impact of the Act is sustainable and lasts over the longer term, these assets must be managed well and in an equitable way to generate benefits for the poor, as well as to promote pro-poor economic growth. In this context, the NREGA should be seen more as a livelihood-generating programme than a wage-earning scheme. It also offers a unique opportunity to turn around rural development. CSE (?) has been monitoring the Act at policy and practice levels on its contributions to sustainable livelihood creation through ecological regeneration. This Media Briefing Workshop is part of our wider activity to disseminate information and monitor the Act’s impacts on rural development

3. When and Where

The activity taken place at the kyariya Gram Panchayatlies under Abu road tehsil dist. Sirohi in rajasthan state. The initial phase of activity started on 15 of Jan. and come to end on 15 of Feb.

4. Aims and targets

To make people aware about Legal aspect of NREGA was our prime goal To create awareness we first we planned to make people informed about what is NREGA all about. In this we decided to explain following things (Before creating awareness you must know how much they are informed about NREGA ,so you can write as, after interacting you could know their level of information on NREGA)

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Work on demand

 Unemployment allowance  Minimum wages

 Payment within 15 days  Worksite facilities  No gender discrimination  Prompt redressal  Our other targets in the awareness are •

Right Payment of right work.

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Timely wage payments.

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Creation of productive assets

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Motivate People to propose village development work

5.Implementation

5.1 Identification of problem regarding the NREGA

About 600 people are working under the NREGA in the kyariya gram panchayat. First we decide to identify the problems which people were actually facing. In this process we found that people do not know all about NREGA. What are their rights and how can they get it?

5.2 Scheduling the meetings:

With the assistance of NGOfield workers we decided the meeting place at the NREGA working site at the lunch time so that we can meet all the worker at one time and easily interact with them for their responses on the matter.

5.3 Conducting a meeting:

Once all the members gathered for the meeting, we started with our introduction and purpose of the meeting conducted. After introducing each other in the meeting, we started discussion by telling them the concept of NREGA. Once the women understood the issue concern, we facilitated the group discussion and encouraged their participation.

5.4 Awareness about the form filling process

People who were working in the NREGA programme, they were facing a problem regarding the filling of payment receive form. After prolonged discussion with them they revealed us their problem related to payment. The postman who distributed money to the job card holders was charging money for filling the form and payment of their dues. So we told the people on the work site itself that there is no need to give money for the form as well as for receiving of payment. We also told them how to fill the payment receipt form.

5.5 Meeting with post man.

When we came to know that postman was charging the money for the payment and was not giving payment on the right time, we decided to meet him to get real picture of that scenario. For this we have to go nearby village Munthala which is 4 km far from the working site, so first day we went there with three local people but he was on leave. Then another day we went to post office and met with him. But when I told him about all the matter and told him. About his wrong deeds .I was totally surprised when he denied of taking money for the payment and accused the worker of lying. At that time no local people was with us so we could not speak more about that matter. Once again another day we went to site and told all the things which we discussed with post man. After confirmation once again from villagers we decided to complain againstpost man to the block development officer.

5.6 Meeting with BDO.

With the help of NGOs worker we wrote a complaint against the post man and decided to give to block development office. We went to office and met with BDO and gave complain to him explaining the whole matter. BDO (Block dev officer) told us that I will visit the site and then will take action against someone.

5.7 Proposal for village development

During our PRI exercise in the village Redwa kalan we did micro planning for the village that what development work can be done in the village and prepared the list of all the work and decided to give it in gram panchayat so that by next year this work can be implemented under the NREGA work.

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Achievements

Awareness in the villagers – our first achievement was that we were able to create awareness among the villagers. The developmental activities in any village can be successful only when the villagers are aware of the gaps in the village and the path to achieve success. We were happy that through our meetings we were able to make the workers aware and also bring them onto the path where they could bridge the self developmental efforts. Apart from this, we were able to generate the following thing amongst the worker

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Demand for Payment on time

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Educate about form filling process

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Demand for wages payment according to work

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agreed on not giving extra money for the payment to the post man

Key success factor

Any programme which aims at the empowerment of a particular group is possible only when their participation is ensured. success of this activity is the involvement of the people in the process. Other thing is support of the NGO field workers who gave us the help whenever we needed and also their motivation inspired us to give our best to the people’s interest. Our positive attitude and consistent efforts kept us on track to do it in more energetic manner until and unless we got success.

.8. Key learning:

Various lessons during this component are as follows:

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It is easy to say but difficult to achieve.

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All development works are different in paper than exist in the reality.

Things learnt in the classroom are easy to understand and many times seems to be rationally true but when you work in the field it may not fit in the situation most of the time.

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Change in attitude grooms the personality and outlook of the person.

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Things that we perceive most of the time are not true.

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Learnt to manage ourselves and things happening around us.

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Now we can stay any part of this world, with very ease.

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Interaction with the People not only material benefit but many non material benefit

we can only be felt.

9. Experience as a grassroots worker

✔ Hands on PRA – we need a better approach of carrying out PRA activities (like if you can explain) as we encountered a lot of problems in doing it and sometimes left in a position where we had no solution.

✔ How to observe – we also need to learn that how we can better observe the things. The observation process should be designed to elicit maximum and efficient results from respondents.

✔ How to be more patient – This is the most critical attribute to be kept in the mind while working on the grassroots level. It was seen that the village people are very shy and they do not come out so easily. Theymay ask for a lot of patience and empathy on part of the worker.

✔ Better ways of carrying out village meetings – we also need additional learning on the effective ways of carrying out village level meetings.

Comments: Overall a good work but writing has to be improved in terms of grammar and word usage, change the words, I have highlighted, and somewhere I have changed the sentences/words.