It is against this background that a model emerging in Chhattisgarh’s own backyard of Surguja — long regarded as one of India’s poorest districts despite its considerable forest and water resources — needs highlighting. Consider Surguja’s profile, and the reasons for its endemic poverty emerge starkly. According to the 2001 census, 64.6 per cent of Surguja’s population was tribal, 90 per cent was dependent on agriculture or minor forest produce, while only 7 per cent could be termed as urbanised. It also had a pathetic work participation rate of around 50 per cent, and was extremely poorly served in terms of road/rail infrastructure. According to statistical details provided by the Chhattisgarh government, the only railway in the district was built 80 years ago — a branch line from Anuppur, about 47.36 km in length. What little infrastructure it has in terms of irrigation and power is concentrated in its central plains. Being forgotten is truly a state of mind in Surguja, except as P. Sainath has reminded us in Everybody Loves a Good Drought, when recurring drought brings in government contractors by the truckload.

Well, finally, there seems to be less pessimistic news emerging out of Surguja, going by a survey conducted earlier this month by students from Delhi and Allahabad universities as well as JNU, under an initiative by the Delhi School of Economics, and spearheaded by eminent economist Jean Dreze. The idea was to gauge whether the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was effective in randomly-selected worksites in Batauli block. Since it was a repeat of an exercise conducted a year earlier, it provided an opportunity to study whether the NREGA was being made more effective.

Among the more encouraging findings was the fact that most families in the area have a job card and that there is a general improvement in the awareness about the act and its entitlements. It has also raised employment levels here quite considerably, with labourers receiving the minimum wage. The works built are also generally productive. But what is arguably the most important finding is that corruption seems to have declined considerably, and contractors have been kept out.

Sure, the familiar problems have not disappeared. But as Dreze notes, “There have been major improvements compared to last year — whether it is with regard to job cards distribution, levels of employment, payment of wages, or quality of the various works.” This time the surveyors found 95 per cent accuracy in muster rolls which indicates that the wages paid out actually reached workers and leakages have been reduced to 5 per cent — last time, it was 50 per cent. This means that with greater attention to safeguards, leakages can be eliminated almost totally. In a country where social welfare projects have leaked like sieves, this a very important finding.

Encouraging as this is, the student-surveyors came away convinced that a great deal more needs to be done to garner NREGA’s potential benefits. For instance, there is still widespread ignorance in the region about the availability of such employment. Even if people know about the NREGA, they are unaware of how to apply for work. Sometimes the authorities appear to have colluded in keeping things this way, or even refusing to provide work. But one of the most persistent complaints to emerge was the long delay in the payment of wages. The law guarantees that workers are paid within 15 days, but in reality this could take even six weeks. For families crucially dependent on this money, sometimes for their very survival, such delays are unconscionable. The matter came up at a public hearing in Batauli on June 13, at the end of the fortnight-long survey. The district collector’s representative hoped that a recent decision to provide advances to the gram sabha for wages would address this complaint. The problem however is that in lethargic gram sabhas — the NREGA experience has proved there are a disturbing number of them — even such a provision may not work.

In a region named after a seed rich in oil called ‘surguja’, the question arises whether the seeds planted by effective NREGA interventions here will succeed in changing Surguja’s future. And the answer could well provide a clue to tackling serious regional disparities elsewhere in India.