Comment on the 'stone-eating' news of Sinapali

There is no doubt that people living in KBK region of Orissa have serious challenges in overcoming poverty, unemployment and disease. Lot of work remains to be done in protection of common property resources,land improvement and skill development. But to say that people are eating stones is simply an affront to human dignity.Firstly, it is obviously a false statement. Secondly, it is a statement made with a view to gain cheap political mileage. Thirdly, it is an irresponsible stance, as nothing can replace the hardwork of trying to work with the communities, let them understand the theoretical opportunities of NREGA and the practical ways of trying to get the maximum of it etc., just to cite one of the opportunities available for the people. For example, many job card holders do not know that they need to apply a second time, after getting the job card. It is also a challenging task to see the correspondence between the NREGA labour side and the creation of assets side. What kind of assets are being created? Are they really the right ones, as decided by the community? Another important question is the stance that contractors are not allowed. In reality, somebody is required to get all the material for a public work together, stand there and get the men and women organised for work, pull up those who are not working properly and generally taking care of quality and speed of work. You have a choice of calling that person by any name you like, ‘Mahatma Gandhi’ or ‘work executant’ or ‘field worker’ or ‘supervisor’ or whatever. Whatever name you may give him, the person exists. NREGA pretends that such person does not exist. What is important is to see that such persons are transparently selected in open meeting of the community or gram sabha, give him reasonable margin of profit and ensure that he is held responsible in case of any faulty work. Right now in NREGA works, nobody is held accountable for quality and this person gets decided through non-transparent means by way of a simple device that officially you do not recognise that he exists! This is the same mindset which pretends that sharecroppers and absentee landlords do not exist. Rather than recognise the fact that you have people who cultivate the lands recorded in favour of somebody else, give each of this category some basic rights apportionment, the State pretends that by law all the tenancy in Orissa has been abolished. This has pushed the tenancy under the carpet. This has affected the profitability of agriculture as an occupation. This has also resulted in lots of lands lying fallow and valuable agricultural land not getting adequate resources for development. Neither the absentee landlord invests because he is not present all the time. Nor would the tenant invest in land, because anyway the land does not belong to him. In NREGA also, this is the same manner in which the State does not recognise the existence of contractors and thereby the quality of work is hampered and the assets are not generated worth the money that is spent.