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.