Transparent implementation of Employment Guarantee Act
We are focussing on empowering the resident tribal communities to be more vigilant at transparent and responsible implementation of recently enacted National Rural Employment Guarantee Act that has turned employment (work) as Fundamental Right to every rural daily wage earner. From earlier tendency of government to dole out employment as charity that went mostly to the corrupt and exploiters the situation has changed wherein the wage earners can legally hold the government responsible. This has a potential to enhance purchasing power of the poor, recreate their natural infrastructures, ensure Household Food Security and curb the trend of massive distress migration.
We are trying to empower the wage earners to demand work as a Right, participate actively in planning and monitoring through a process of Social Audits, negotiate for better wages and work site facilities and social security cover through collective synergy (unionization)
We facilitiate awareness and experiential learning campaigns, develop educational materials, promote leaderships, resort to strategic Media Advocacy, Legal resorts and across the table negotiations with the policy makers and bureaucrats and lobbying alongwith like minded individuals and civil society organizations for appropriate policy amends.
Corruption has been the landmark of earlier employment schemes run by the government but now since an Act is in place the communities need to be empowered to check corruption so that workers' Rights and Dignity are ensured.
About You
Location
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Your idea
Focus of activity
Advocacy
Year the initative began (yyyy)
2001
Positioning of your initiative on the mosaic diagram,
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Lack of Accountability & Transparency
Which of the principles is the primary focus of your work?
Foment Transparency
If you believe some other barrier or principle should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic:
More responsive and responsible bureaucracy,judiciary and polity that is accountable to the people.
Name Your Project
Transparent implementation of Employment Guarantee Act
Describe Your Idea
We are focussing on empowering the resident tribal communities to be more vigilant at transparent and responsible implementation of recently enacted National Rural Employment Guarantee Act that has turned employment (work) as Fundamental Right to every rural daily wage earner. From earlier tendency of government to dole out employment as charity that went mostly to the corrupt and exploiters the situation has changed wherein the wage earners can legally hold the government responsible. This has a potential to enhance purchasing power of the poor, recreate their natural infrastructures, ensure Household Food Security and curb the trend of massive distress migration.
We are trying to empower the wage earners to demand work as a Right, participate actively in planning and monitoring through a process of Social Audits, negotiate for better wages and work site facilities and social security cover through collective synergy (unionization)
We facilitiate awareness and experiential learning campaigns, develop educational materials, promote leaderships, resort to strategic Media Advocacy, Legal resorts and across the table negotiations with the policy makers and bureaucrats and lobbying alongwith like minded individuals and civil society organizations for appropriate policy amends.
Corruption has been the landmark of earlier employment schemes run by the government but now since an Act is in place the communities need to be empowered to check corruption so that workers' Rights and Dignity are ensured.
Innovation
Description of initiative
We are focussing on empowering the resident tribal communities to be more vigilant at transparent and responsible implementation of recently enacted National Rural Employment Guarantee Act that has turned employment (work) as Fundamental Right to every rural daily wage earner. From earlier tendency of government to dole out employment as charity that went mostly to the corrupt and exploiters the situation has changed wherein the wage earners can legally hold the government responsible. This has a potential to enhance purchasing power of the poor, recreate their natural infrastructures, ensure Household Food Security and curb the trend of massive distress migration.
We are trying to empower the wage earners to demand work as a Right, participate actively in planning and monitoring through a process of Social Audits, negotiate for better wages and work site facilities and social security cover through collective synergy (unionization)
We facilitiate awareness and experiential learning campaigns, develop educational materials, promote leaderships, resort to strategic Media Advocacy, Legal resorts and across the table negotiations with the policy makers and bureaucrats and lobbying alongwith like minded individuals and civil society organizations for appropriate policy amends.
Corruption has been the landmark of earlier employment schemes run by the government but now since an Act is in place the communities need to be empowered to check corruption so that workers' Rights and Dignity are ensured.
Innovation
We are not limited to mere implementation of an Act but empowering the rural masses to work towards making the Bureaucrats more responsive and responsible, raise questions on the integrity of implementation, negotiate for higher wages and social security cover and unionize to be in a better collective bargaining position and be represented in policy making processes that will keep the dignity of labor in its focus.
We have the role of a facilitator and represent the marginalized communities through Policy level Advoccay.
Delivery Model
We work through running well -designed awareness campaigns using local techniques, culture and dialect. We have worked proactively at emergence of strong local leadership, issue based peoples' collectives and building meaningful relationships with the poorest of poor. It has proved its worth by the fact that the otherwise docile and hopeless tribal community has begun to question the bureaucrats' integrity, confront the Administartion with grievances and ask for information (using Right to Information). This has forced the local Administartion to be on toes and dare not take the complaints and causes softly. They are beaten out of their earlier apathy to the poor and their causes. For instances the earlier exploitation by underpayment of wages has come down drastically.
Key Operational Partnerships
We have an active alliance with the Right to Food Campaign, Human Rights Law Network, Supreme Court Commissoners, Trade Unions, Media Local Youth volunteers, district Administration and like minded civil society organizations. Thay have inputted updated information, helped in legal recourse, highlighted issues to build exert pressure and ally in protests and demonstartions. The larger state and national alliance is needed for Lobbying and Advocacy.
Impact
Financial Model
We have recently introduced a meager and affordable mebership fee that will in the days to come offset a large part of recurring and administrative expenses needed to forward the initiative.
What percentage, if any, of the total operating costs does earned income (from products, services, or other fees) represent?
5%
How is the initiative financed? Is it financially self-sustainable or profitable? How much do beneficiaries contribute?
Presently the initiative is financed by the Ashoka stipend and the meagre support recieved from the friends and well wishers. The community takes care of food during meetings and training and camps. Local contributions are encouraged during campaigns.
Once the membership fee is in plave we will have a greatly self -sustained status.
Effectiveness
Sensitized communities at demanding work as their Right, more vigilant at curbing corruption and exploitation, enabled at negotiation with the government, having a vision of their dignity of labor being the core of the policies and programs. This is a significant change from a situation when they suffered exploitation calmly. This attitudinal change is critical to unionization of the around 30,000 wage earners in the unorganized sector having no social security cover and debarred from approaching lawcourts through the anti labor legislation in the state.
Which element of the program proved itself most effective?
The realization that the work is now the legal entitlement of the rural workers and they need not depend on government dole outs but demand it as a right. The empowerment to the point of workers monitoring the work, demanding stipulated wages and taking up the grievances with the administartion has been very useful at buyilding tremendous pressure for transparent implementation.
Number of clients in the last year?
We related to nearly 3000 workers last year
What is the potential demand?
That the errant and corrupt bureaucrats not go unpunished for devoiding workers of their Right to work now a legal entitlement. Secondly the workers be covered by a comprehensive social security as a right. The long pending (since 70s) Bill to this effect be immediately tabled in the Parliament. Thirdly all the Labor laws keep the dignity of Labor in the focus.
Scaling up Strategy
Formation of a nationwide strong unorganized sector workers' apolitical union apt at better collective bargaining, demand higher wages as per the current price index, have the year long guarantee of work and work towards a more equitable society.
Stage of the initiative
1
Expansion plan
Work more intensively at facilitating the emegence of a strong new Trade Union movement that is not politically guided by selfish interest and to ensure that 30 million Indian workers in the unorganized sector are covered with a cvomprehensive Social Security as a matter of their Fundamental Constitutional Right.
Origin of the Initiative
since the outset of my work with the marginalized communities about 5 years back I realized that the issue of Household Food insecurity huanted at the bottom of abject poverty that manifested itself in massive malnutrition among children, frequent distress migration and a hopeless labor without any reasonable purchasing power to lead a decent life. The exploitation and corruption prevented even a fraction of benefits trickling to poor. The series of malnutrition deaths I witnessed drove me to launch an Advocacy campaign to alert the government to this serious manifestation of poverty and deprivation. I strongly pleaded that unless Household Food Insecurity is ensured and the work is turned as legal entitlement the tragedy will have no end. With a larger National Peoples' Movenment we could get the historical National Rural Employment Gurantee Act passed that gurantees 100 days of assure employment to every rural family on demand.
I since the day the Act was enacted worked on generating widespread awareness and empowering the resident communiuties to participate actively in demanding teh work, conducting social audits, bring the grievances to the notice of bureaucrats, keep vigil on corruption and negotiate for better work facilities and social security cover.
The innovation is to form the union of these rural wage earners (that wasn't possible since Independence) with adequate collective bargaining power and policy influencing.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
Main Obstacles to Scaling Up
1. The lack of adequate infrastructure and human resources.
2. The lack of adequate political will of the governemnt towards welfaristic role manifested by gradual withdrawal of its responsibilities.
Main Financial Challenges
We are unable to locate resource agencies that may like to support such kind of initiatives. That greatly obstructs the pace of work.
We may need 5,00,000 INR a year and mobility (a jeep or so).
Main Partnership Challenges
The relenting of many NGOs to partnership in our kind of work with shades of activism.
How did you hear about this contest and what is your main incentive to participate?
Read it on your home page. Read a email from ASHOKA.
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Comments
I was talking to Indian development economists at Oxford University on this particular transparency challenge and my recollection is that they nominated Jean Dreze as a pivotal collaboration entrepreneur in this field? Are you in touch with him? Or who do you suggest we bookmark as being the greatest collaborator in your context mosaic?
Yes I work in close collaboration with Jean Dreze. We have pivotal collaboration with National Right to Food Campaign led by Jean.
As far as I can see when I search http://www.ashoka.org , there is no mention of Dreze. I find this confusing because he's seems to be quite a pivotal figure in your mosaic area
I think ashoka profiles would be much more informing the rest of the world if they added one question - who in your whole practice mosaic do you most admire . Of course I am not meaning to assume that Dreze is the most connected person in your mosaic
and I am not meaning to criticise any of the deepest work that any particular ashoka SEs do- but I come from the reverse direction; when research of some people outside of ashoka who care a lot about eg India keeps coming up with a name like Dreze; I search ashoka.org and by not finding any connections assume that the whole area he's intersted in is not represented by ashoka...
it's sad how one missing information link can lead to huge amounts of duplicated efforts when people are trying to map links between networks and the clusters of grassroots contexts they serve
I am not very clear as to what your comment means. Please elaborate
Seema
If you could wish for 8 people meeting around the same table (which you are the 9th person hosting) who could do most to change the world of the people you are concerned with , who would you choose?
In doing this networking and social entrepreneur leadership exercise, a few clues:
there is no point in choosing 2 people who have access to the same networks, same influences - that wastes one of the seats; you need people who are prepared to put all their reputation and collaboration trust on the line because they believe this issue merits/sustains/compounds the same human and entrepreneurial system urgency as you do
would I be correct in assuming that one of the seats is for dreze? (because he knows what funds are actually getting through to the grassroots)
a second seat could be for Manmohan Singh or Sonia Gandhi or perhaps the President of India - which could pull the most strings from the top
a third seat might be for someone with international influence and currently active empowerment mediation - would it be Yunus, Eigen, Stern, Sen?
I don't know if the other 3 seats need to represent more grassroots diversity stories of the whole area you work in or more of those who have responsibility for the channels of power; is there any media person in the whole country who would cover the story?
I am not necessarily saying that you should answer this question, but I am very surprised that it is not debated at the ashoka web; and similarly there are probably another 50 roundtables that merit debate where transparency and social entrepreneur mosaics interface. Indeed, instead of a catalogue of 2000 separate individuals links within and across such roundtable debates would help people understand/map how ashoka's work has local to worldwide scaling potential
Anyhow this would be just about the simplest exercise we can recommend from the experiences of valuetrue community's citizens worldwide open spaces on how to map transparency - see eg our website and my competition entry
technical note : I use wish in the same sense that ted.com communities practice
- eg wishmaker 1 Bill Clinton
- eg wishmaker 2 Larry Brilliant
Hello Ma'em,
I am Paritosh Tripathi from India. It's nice to find about your method but I am unable to understand what innovative methods or processes you are using? Is it innovative because no one is talking about the Employment Garuntee Act and that you have come up with some kind of campaigning which is going to help prople know about this act and then question the Govt and its channels.
How are you making things transparent, only by campaigning?
I think you misread. Campiagn is just a means. what I aim at is the empowerment of the marginalized wage earners who have recieved the Right to Work through a legislation and that too via a nationwide Advocacy and Lobbying.
It is important that the wage eraners realise work as their legal entitlement, proactively keep a vigil on discrepancies and corruption, lobby for fair and transparent implementation and now thay have a whole avenue opened up to form union and work for better work facilities, wages and social security. As you know in India to keep anything moving we should suatain the pressure on the governemnt to assign priorities and political committments lest all well intentioned leagislation will be buried in the books alone.
Though this legislation has been enacted but the top leadres including the Finnace Minister, Corporate sectors and business media has constantly criticized it as a waste. They feel the resources will go down the drains of corruption as has happenned with other schemes. They believe that more inputs into corporatization will let the benefits trickle down to the poor. We on the contrary uphold that 80% of the rural poor who contribute significantly to the GDP do have a Right to dignified living enshrined in teh Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. They have long suffered deprivations, acute household food insecurity, malnourishment and preventable deaths. It is our committmnet to make the NREGA work with all transparency and be a means to enhance the poors' purchasing power, bring in more equitable social order, provide hiterto denied collective bargaining powers to the millions of wage earners in the unorganized sector.
This is an interesting proposal, as it seems to relate tribal employment conditions to corruption. The trouble is that this link is not clearly made – how does the program affect the level of corruption or strengthen the fight against corruption? Intuitively, it seems that empowering vulnerable local communities in their dealings with the bureaucracy would have a corruption-reducing effect. The connection needs to be spelled out more explicitly.
Also it would help if the content of the work, the methodology, and its organization were spelled out more clearly. What, for example, are the legal strategies used to improve the status of these workers? How do the workers themselves contribute to this? How does this help to reduce – or at least raise awareness about and downward pressure on – corruption, as distinct from helping workers obtain better employment benefits?
We have raised the need for anti-corruption initiatives in NREGP implementation by ensuring wide publicity to our work on Biometric Tracking of Payments Received by Beneficiaries of NREGP.
The Manthan Award 2006 (www.manthanaward.org and http://www.manthanaward.org/Bio-metric%20tracking%20of%20payments%20unde...)
for e-Inclusion and Livelihood Creation and the news paper article
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/21904.html
attracted the attention of the Principal Commissioner, Rural Development, Government of Bihar, who was on the look out for suitable applications to plug the loop holes in the NREGP implementation.
He invited us to do a Proof of Concept for e-Muster for NREGP Beneficiaries. The response was positive and the Chief Minister of Bihar was keen to implement a near fool proof system. More details of the initiative can be seen at http://www.indianexpress.com/story/33365.html and http://ll2b.blogspot.com.
I am available for any further details off line at krisdev@gmail.com.
Gopalakrishnan Devanathan (Kris Dev)
ICT & e-Gov Consultant for RTI & NREGP Implementation.
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