AS observers in India watch how the Centre’s showpiece rural job guarantee scheme unfolds, a village in central Maharashtra is displaying how villages can skillfully use it to turn around insecure subsistence economies and arrest distress migration to the city.

Ahmednagar district’s Hivre Bazaar has used the Maharashtra’s Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS)—the 1978 state program was the blueprint for the new national law—to conserve their rainwater and soil, boost agriculture and lift personal incomes. And here, the increasing irrelevance of a job guarantee law is the best testament to its success.

About 20 lakh families across 12 state districts have signed up for the program since its early February launch, with 1.3 lakh of these in Maharashtra’s largest rural district, Ahmednagar. But in this drought-prone belt, east of the Sahyadris, not one of Hivre Bazaar’s 180-odd families have signed up yet.

LIKE the EGS, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is promising rural India the dual benefits of employment and building communal assets, setting aside about 17,000 crores for the 200 districts chosen for its first phase.

But as numerous observers warn, failure is easy with officials on the ground and village elite joining hands to siphon off allocations. But Hivre Bazaar has bucked this trend to ensure that the program doesn’t just remain a social safety net but combined with some inspired leadership and well-thought out measures, can help families climb out of poverty.

Sarpanch Popatrao Pawar spearheaded the change. The genial commerce post-graduate chucked club cricket in Mumbai to return to his village in 1988, and set about tackling its water woes.

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