Exodus of labour

These are harrowing times in Malda, writes Manas R Bannerjee

PRIME Minister Manmohan Singh described the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act as a “landmark in our history in removing poverty from the face of the nation”, because the scheme provides for 100 days of employment in a year to every rural household in 200 districts (Malda included) across the country. But for various reasons, it is not being implemented properly in Malda and thousands of labourers are leaving in search of jobs elsewhere.The scheme — involving creation of new rural infrastructure, improvement of road connectivity, school buildings, and the creation of water sources for irrigation — has been stalled in all blocks for the moment due to notification of the Lok Sabha by-poll scheduled for 16 September. The areas not under the Malda LS constituency in this district have come under the EC guideline. Thousands of day labourers did not get jobs for aman transplantation and jute retting due to a severe drought-like situation in July and August and, on the other hand, there was no successful implementation of the NREGA. Even though the motto of the scheme is to focus on the “poorest of the poor” and provide livelihood security, prevent distress migration and eradicate the scourge of poverty, disease and indebtedness, nothing has been achieved here since for the past year. In Malda there are 80, 419 marginal workers and 1.7 lakh non-workers (65.31 per cent of the total population based on the 1991 Census 1991). As per the 2001 Census, the district’s total population is 30.49 lakh.The exodus of labourers came to light during the election campaign when political leaders found their voters had left the district and would not return before the by-poll. Left leaders were worried, particularly by the exodus from the Barind belt, a red bastion. They criticised the Election Commission for implementing such a code of conduct and tried hard to implement the 100-days wage employment programme to get labourers’ votes.District magistrate Chittaranjan Das agreed there was a problem but expressed his inability to do anything. He said, “Day labourers will have to go to other states where they will be intercepted by police as Bangladeshi nationals. Some of them will die in accidents and some will fall ill or bring diseases like HIV here.” It may be recalled that the district administration was in trouble to prove the “Indian” identity of over 35 Malda labourers arrested by the Mumbai police on the suspicion of being Bangladeshis. In a separate incident, more than 10 Malda labourers were killed in a building collapse in New Delhi just before the assembly election. It is also true that the district authorities tried hard to implement the 100-day job scheme for landless labourers but this was not implemented in many blocks because of technical reasons and the inefficiency of block officials. The allotted funds were returned from the blocks. For example, Habibpur block in Barind belt received nearly Rs 14 crore for implementing the scheme. At the last meeting the district magistrate detected a huge amount of unutilised funds in this block. Though the block development officer was asked to prepare a 100-day guarantee scheme to utilise at least Rs 9 crore, the district authorities finally did not approve of it. The reason? “The BDO had failed to prepare the scheme following the NREGA guideline.”On the other hand, 105 labourers, under the CPI-M-L (Liberation) banner, staged an agitation in Kaliachak II block and 54 of them managed job cards from the BDO on 12 August. But they have not got jobs till date. As a result, all 54 of them, led by Raja Bali, are planning to demand compensation from the government. The NREGA rules state that if the government fails to provide jobs for at least 14 days within 15 days from the date of registration (issue date of job cards) it would have to arrange compensation.As for the fate of job card-holders who have not been given employment by the government, one will have to wait and see.

Published on 8 Sept,2006 ( N B Extra)