Some Issues In The Food For Work Programme

Brinda Karat

“We do not eat vegetables even in our dreams.” ----

Kishore Rathore, village Marlagonda, district Nanded, Maharashtra

IN October 2004, the UPA government announced an expanded food for work project (FFWP) in 150 backward districts of the country, ostensibly as a precursor to a rural employment guarantee legislation to ensure at least 100 days of work to every rural family. If properly designed and implemented, the FFWP can to some extent ameliorate the conditions of acute distress prevalent among vast sections of the rural masses, caused by the neo-liberal policy framework of successive governments at the centre. Although more than six months have passed the central government itself has not done a proper review. Till April 5 of this year no utilisation reports of the funds available for the projects had come in from the states. Yet the fulfilment of the demand for employment is a life and death issue for the people.

What is the actual situation on the ground? How far is the project able to fulfil its declared objectives? In different states, party units are studying the issue with a view to concretise the demands of the struggles of the rural poor. As part of this effort, I went to three backward districts of Maharashtra --- Yeotmal (not only the largest district but one where the largest number of farmer suicides had taken place), Hingoli and Nanded. with the district party secretaries Shankar Rao Danaov, Vijay Ghabane, Ramesh Deore, and others including Mariam Dhavale, Arjun, Shakeel, Zaheer Khan and many other local comrades. We had discussions with the collectors of all three districts, visited several worksites and met over 500 people from about 15 villages directly involved either in the work projects or in the search for work. We visited some villages where the worksites had been listed in the government circular. Later, along with secretary of the CPI(M)’s Maharashtra state committee Ashok Dhavale, we had a meeting with the secretary of rural development of Maharashtra who is in charge of the scheme at the state level and gave him a charter of demands based on the details we had collected of the working of the project.

We found a horrific picture of inhuman conditions at the worksite, extremely low piece rate wages for hard manual labour and, most shocking of all, women doing a nine hour day of heavy work entirely “free of cost.”

CENTRAL GUIDELINES

Allocations

The project, unlike other employment schemes, is financed fully by the central government and is entirely driven by the central guidelines issued for the Food for Work Programme. In its January 29 circular on the project the ministry has clearly mentioned “ No deviation from the provision of the guidelines is permissible.” The experience in Maharashtra shows that the guidelines for the project itself are a hindrance to its working and need urgent revision.

The first question is that of allocation. According to the guidelines, a minimum of 25 per cent for work done is to be paid for in cash and the rest in foodgrains. So the cash allocations should be one fourth of that of foodgrains. However, in the last fiscal year between October 2004  to April 2005, a total of 1951 crore rupees was allocated to the different states while the foodgrain component for the same period was 2 million tonnes the value of which is far less than the specified norm. The central government has played a cruel trick on those most vulnerable sections who most desperately need work reflected in its calculation of the value of the foodgrains being given in the FFWP.  Whereas the guidelines in section 2.5 (ii) state that the ministry will pay the FCI for the foodgrains at the BPL rates of five rupees per kilogram of wheat, the ministry itself for the purpose of allocations, calculates the foodgrains at APL rates at 10 rupees a kilo, thus inflating the entire cost of the project depriving a larger section of people from its benefits. At APL rates 2 million tonnes is worth 2000 crore rupees but at BPL rates the government would have to double the amount of foodgrain allocated thus expanding the programme.

This dichotomy in the guidelines is also reflected in the calculation for wages. The guidelines state that a maximum of 5 kg of foodgrains is to be given to the workers. This can only constitute 75 per cent of the minimum wage if it is calculated at APL rates. In other words, those who with a BPL card or an Antodaya card would get foodgrains at one third or half the price are expected to sell their labour in exchange for foodgrains which are priced much higher. This is a most vicious form of exploitation embedded in the guidelines. Fortunately, in Maharashtra as perhaps in most other states, the state government is calculating the foodgrains given as wages at BPL prices. In Maharashtra the government has decided that it will give a 50:50 ratio in cash and foodgrains. However, the central guidelines are extremely duplicitous on this score and in effect the whole scheme is scaled down and the actual allocation is in real terms less than claimed.

As far as the actual allocations are concerned, in Maharashtra at least the money was received only in January and the projects were finalised and sanctioned only by the end of April and in some cases, the beginning of May. We were told that it was only in a few districts that the project was actually being fully implemented. In the three districts we visited the record was dismal. To illustrate in Wani tehsil of Yeotmal district the FFWP was being implemented in only two villages out of 300. The utter callousness in allocations was highlighted by the example of Yeotmal district. The district list of allocations showed only 2 crores and the plan was made accordingly. Several months later it was discovered that it was 22 crores not 2 crores, a “mistake” we were told by the secretary. Meanwhile, thousands of workers had been denied the benefits which should have accrued to them. The delay in allocations has meant that in the state as a whole the FFWP has yet to start working properly.

This is most likely the situation in other states also. For the current fiscal year, although the allocated cash component from the central government for all the states is 4,500 crore rupees, till the third week of May only 120 crore rupees has been released by the centre. This is presumably because the stipulation of 60 per cent utilisation of funds given in the first instalment has not been received. In other words, the low allocation reflects the non-working of the programme eight months after it has been launched. In this period it can be assumed therefore there has been little or no accretion in work opportunities in rural India through the food for work programme.

This underlines the total lack of political will to implement a programme that could help the poor.

Identification

The FFWP is limited to the 150 backward districts in the country. The concept itself is questionable as is the criteria for identification. For example the secretary of rural development in Maharashtra pointed out that in the 11 districts identified as backward there were only 8 tribal dominated districts whereas the state has 15 such districts which according to him should have been included. As research elsewhere has shown, in even the so-called most advanced districts there are the most appalling levels of deprivation among the poor. A study done of 500 landless families in two developed districts in Haryana by the AIDWA affiliated research centre showed that both men and women had got only around 35 days of employment in the village and that men had to go in for short term migration in non-agricultural work to get work for around 90 days. The FFWP ignores the huge social inequalities in populations within a district. The guidelines should have permitted the resources so allocated to the States to be also used for those who require its benefits in other districts not identified as “backward.”

Bureaucratic and Centralised

The scheme is conceived as being “supplementary” to the existing employment generation schemes such as the SGRY and in the case of Maharashtra, the EGS. In fact the common denominator of the worst features of different schemes seem to have been included or conversely the better features of different schemes have been excluded in the FFWP. For example whereas the SGRY specifically has provision for minimum 30 per cent of women the FFWP programme has no such provision.  The FFWP is highly centralised and the collector is the nodal agency to prepare the plan for the entire district with the help of any professional agency. Although there is some mention of consultation with gram sabhas and panchayat institutions in the guidelines, it is entirely cosmetic since the plan itself will have been prepared without any consultation. In our visit where we met several sarpanches and members of the panchayat there was not a single case where they had been consulted about the work being done. On the contrary we were very specifically told by the officials that the guidelines mandated that the plan should be conceived and executed by the collector or administrative officials deputed by him and that consultation with the sarpanches was not required. Thus the crucial issue of peoples’ participation in planning and project implementation has been ignored. The design of the projects listed in the guidelines consist of mainly heavy earth work for both men and women We were told that there was scope for many other types of work. As long ago as 1980 an evaluation report of the working of the EGS in Maharashtra had suggested that the work could include “construction of houses for the weaker sections, construction of schools, toilets for women, development of handicrafts and so on.” Unfortunately none of these appropriate suggestions have been accepted.

The centralisation of the scheme has had negative consequences on its working and in the absence of any defined principles of accountability it encourages corrupt practices. For example, we found that the government list of the schemes being implemented included a 7 lakh rupees project in a particular village called Islapur in Nanded district. The sarpanch and a large number of families who were looking for work told us they had no idea of the project listed and in fact it was only on paper. In another instance, in Dongargaon village in the same district, work worth 7 lakh rupees is supposed to have been completed but when we met the people of the village they said that no work project had been implemented in their village and on the contrary they had to go to a neighbouring village to find work We later in our meetings with officials demanded an enquiry into all such concrete cases where we had collected the details.

Another negative aspect in the guidelines is that there are no provisions to provide workers the opportunity to register for work on a project, nor is it mandatory for the administration to inform the population of the work being planned. We came across numerous cases where families wanted work but they had no access to the information. This is a form of denial of the right to work

However, there are certain welcome provisions in the guidelines such as the setting up of monitoring and vigilance committees with different sections of the people at the village level, the need to display details of the workers employed and wages paid on different work sites, transparency in the working of the scheme, payment of wages within a week of work, and so on. But not a single of these guidelines has been implemented in any of the three districts we visited. This is an area where mass pressure for implementation is essential.

Work, Worksites and Wages

On the side of a road in the Kosmet area of Nanded district, we met a group of about sixty workers, men and women in equal numbers. The project was the restoration of a canal which required heavy earth work with fairly rocky soil. The workers were from Dongargaon village which according to the government register had many ongoing works. The workers laughed when we showed them the list — would we be here 20 km away from home if our own village had work? We were told that another 30 workers from the nearest village of Kosmet were also employed on the site but were taking a mid-day break. The work hours were from 7 in the morning till about 11 or till noon and then again from 3 to 7. The desperate need for employment was reflected in their acceptance of the most inhuman work conditions including the fact that they were doing hard manual labour in 46 degrees temperature. There were at least 25 children at the site but there was no crèche. Nor was there any provision for water. They had to walk at least a kilometre to the nearest water source. These were the conditions at all the work sites we visited.

The impoverishment of the small peasantry in this region was clearly reflected in the worksites we visited. While the majority of the workers at this particular worksite were landless families, at other worksites it was striking that even sixty per cent of those we met had land ranging from four to six acres. These were mainly scheduled tribe families. They said that the lack of irrigation facilities, the low prices offered for their produce, the huge debts that they had incurred due to the rising costs of electricity, water, fertilisers and seeds had forced them to look for work at the food for work sites. Many of them had worked in the last two to three years in the EGS also. At the Kosmet worksite the majority were landless, belonging to the scheduled castes or scheduled tribes.

In Maharashtra there are as many as 14 government agencies involved in implementing the FFWP. These include the minor irrigation, social forestry, forest department, soil conservation and so on. The multiplicity of agencies makes the working of the scheme even more opaque, as each blames the others for not completing a project. The workers at the Kosmet site complained that a project of digging a watershed in another village was incomplete as the social forestry agency informed them that they had no foodgrains. When we confronted the collector with this, he expressed surprise stating that in fact there was a “surfeit of foodgrains” in his district. Even worse the guidelines for immediate payment of wages is not being followed. Except for one case where workers had been paid within a week, in all other cases no payment had been made, sometimes only part payment was made. In Pallodhi village in Hingoli district, about 70-75 workers including 30 women had completed a job of field bunding sanctioned by the soil conservation agency but had not received wages three months after the project was completed. At the Kosmet site itself for the two weeks of work done there had been no payment.

Slave Labour

Whereas the national minimum wage rate is around 66 rupees in the FFWP in Maharashtra the daily wage has been kept at the same rate as the EGS which is just 47 rupees. The most shocking aspect is the extremely low piece rates given for the work. The full picture of the most savage exploitation was unravelled in discussions with the workers at the Kosmet worksite and then later was repeated by workers at every other worksite we visited.

The rates for one cubic metre of earthwork in Maharashtra is just Rs 19.90. In the manual for government contractors, the same amount of work is listed at the rate of Rs 47.30p. Even taking out the 7 per cent profit margins permitted to contractors the rate comes to around 45 rupees but on FFWP worksites the workers are being paid over 60 per cent less. 

According to the workers, in one day around two or 2.5 cubic feet can be dug which means that they are earning less than even the low minimum wage doing hard manual labour.

We asked the women what is the work they do and what are they paid? The women lift the earth dug by the men. Usually they have to take the earth about four to five metres away. One cubic metre equals about 1565 kg of mud which means the women are lifting over 3000 to 3500 kg of mud a day. The women say they lift about 30 kg a time and 100 times a day.

And what are they paid? NOT A SINGLE PAISA. The Maharashtra government has listed only digging of the earth as a job. But the workers say that if they were to dig and also lift the earth then they would be able to do only half the amount. So each worker brings along a woman member of his family. They do all the lifting work and the government gets the work of two workers for one-third the cost of one. It is for this reason that we did not see any single women at any of the worksites. We met widows at the site but they had come along with their brothers or relations. Saraswati, a widow at the Kosmet worksite, said, “There is no work separately for women. I have to plead with my brother to bring me to the worksite and he will give me some of the money he earns which is how I feed my three children.” Thus even in her eyes it is he who is earning the money although the work she does is no less. It is only when the project requires that the earth is lifted and dumped 10 metres away from the site that it is paid work, again at very low rates of just between 4.40 rupees to 5.80 rupees per cubic metre depending on the quality of the soil.

However, if you compare the work women do at the sites with, say, a manual labourer working as a coolie for a contractor then the rates in Maharashtra are 10 rupees per 100 kg lifted and moved. According to these rates a woman should be paid at least 300 rupees for the 3000 kg, she is lifting but in the current design of the FFWP she provides free labour to the government. All the women we met were frail, clearly highly aneamic, their daily diet jawar bhakris and chilli chutney. It is a measure of the utter failure as well as the inhumanity within the project itself as being implemented in Maharashtra that women already reduced to shadows by constant hunger and malnutrition should be forced to do the heaviest of manual labour without the work being even recognised as being essential to the process and without any payment.

Later, when we asked workers at other worksites in different tehsils and districts the story was the same. The rural development secretary in Mumbai in charge of the FFWP expressed surprise at our report. “Is that so?” he said/. “Well, we must look into it.” Shown the huge difference between the piece rates in contractors manuals and the rates given to workers at the FFWP worksite he said, “if required, it would be revised.”

STUDY THE SITUATION AND STRUGGLE

While the party will have to study the concrete situation in the different states including in other districts in Maharashtra to work out the immediate demands for the struggles of the rural poor for work and food, the experience in the three districts that our team had visited highlights the infirmities in the working of the project. It points to the urgent need for a widespread struggle in all these areas to ensure that savage exploitation and conditions of acute distress among vast sections of the rural population are addressed and that some immediate steps for relief are taken.