NREGA wages: 20 km away,15 days late,and only once a week

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.

Nathu is lucky — he got work,and at the bank,his wages. But the journey was not easy. In fact,it could be likened to a hurdle race.

Atariya,Nathu’s village,is still waiting to be connected to the rest of the world by the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana. To get anywhere,residents walk 6 km on a dirt track to the village of Kakarwaha. From Kakarwaha run three buses a day to Badagaon,about 14 km away,which has the nearest bank.

The day he collected his NREGA wages,Nathu walked an hour and a half to Kakarwaha — and was thankful it did not rain to make the journey longer,or even impossible. Only two of the three daily buses would reach him to Badagaon before the bank shut for the day.

At the bank,Nathu stood in queue with others from the Bhela panchayat,all come to pick up their payments. He was lucky to make it to the counter before the 2.30 pm closing time — unlike Halke Pal from his village who did not,and would have to come back next Thursday,the day of the week the bank has assigned his village for NREGA payments.

The handwritten chart pasted on the bank wall isn’t an official document. It reads,‘Haiderpur: Monday,Antorra: Tuesday,Amarpur: Wednesday,Bhela: Thursday,Doonda: Friday’. “It is an informal local arrangement to regulate the workload,” said Prakash Chandra Yadav,the cashier,who sits in a tiny,poorly-lit room.

The bank has a staff of three,including the manager. When the manager is on leave,Yadav holds the fort. In 2001,Yadav did a basic course in computers in Tikamgarh. It has been eight years,but the computer is yet to arrive in the bank. When it does — if it does — Yadav fears he will need to be trained all over again.

Down the street from Yadav’s bank is the Madhya Bharat Grameen Bank,serving another set of panchayats. Here too,NREGA payments are made only on allotted days. Field Officer Ramesh Jain said,“If we were to do NREGA payments for everyone every day,we would not be able to do anything else when the season is on. We would have to ignore our customers.”

He amended hastily,“The NREGA worker is also my customer,of course.” But he had made his point.

Yadav was more forthright about his bank’s ‘NREGA problem’: “Job cards and old age pensions are bogus entries for us,there is no benefit in them for the bank.” Yadav estimated — without explaining the basis for his arithmetic — that his bank loses Rs 5,000 per day at each branch on account of old age pension and NREGA work.

On his way back to Atariya,sitting with 40 others on the roof of the overcrowded 4 pm Badagaon-Kakarwaha bus,Nathu was probably doing his own math.

The payment had come a little over 30 days after he last worked — the Act stipulates that the worker must be paid within 15 days. In the intervening month,he told The Indian Express,he had borrowed Rs 500-700 from the local moneylender,at an interest of Rs 5 per month on every Rs 100.

The bus fare is Rs 10. Back in the village,Rs 400 would go to the moneylender,leaving Nathu with Rs 40. With this,he would buy some vegetables and rations.

For Nathu Ram,NREGA has not broken the cycle — the day after his trip to the bank,he was back looking for daily wage labour. When he tries very hard — and when he is very lucky — he gets 10 days’ work in a month. In a day or two,he said,he might need to take another loan.

Still,Nathu feels he is better off than Ram Lal and Kishna and Chalona and Tulsi and Thona and Khetta — all from his village. Each one of them had a job card,and they still had to migrate to Delhi to look for work.