Nathu Ram has studied up to Class 5, owns two acres of non-irrigated land, and looks much older than his 48 years. This year, Nathu Ram got work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) for 28 days. He received the third instalment of his wages at the end of last month.

To take his money, Nathu Ram went to the District Cooperative Central Bank in Badagaon, district Tikamgarh, on a Thursday. Instead of being given in cash, NREGA wages are now deposited in beneficiaries’ bank accounts. According to a handwritten chart pasted on the bank’s wall, payments for three villages under the Bhela panchayat — Bhela, Atariya and Rashan Kheda — will be made only on Thursdays. Nathu belongs to Atariya.

Nathu considers himself fortunate to have got 28 days of work this year. He had no work in 2007, the year he got his NREGA job card. And in 2008, he worked only for a week.

Nathu’s job card was taken away by the panchayat sachiv, or secretary, immediately after he got his money from the bank. The sachiv and the pradhan are responsible for handing out job cards, marking attendance and facilitating payment.

In Bundelkhand’s heart of darkness, where farmers are battling a fifth successive year of drought and where migration has become the theme of the local proverb and folk song, villages bristle with stories of corruption in NREGA job cards. Cards aren’t made, it is said, unless the beneficiary is in the pradhan’s and sachiv’s circle of favoured few — and the duo then colludes to cheat the labourer of a large portion of his wages.

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