Her 15-year-old sister is already married and Sayeeda too may be married off early.

Sayeeda's father, an extremely hardworking labourer, cannot find work in the village. Like one of the 575 families in Pimpaldari, Aundha block, Hingoli, he applied for a job card under the Maharashtra Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MREGS) but, like many others, he had not received it till July 2008.

Pimpaldari is one of the villages being closely observed by Ugam Gram Vikas Sanstha under the PACS Programmes NREGS Campaign 2008.

Ugam is among several Hingoli-based CSO partners of the Dushkal Hatawu Manus Jagawu (DHMJ) drought forum initiated under the PACS Programme.

Jayaji Paikrao, chief functionary of Ugam, explains that CSOs are involved in the MREGS in Hingoli in two capacities: some are technical support providers (TSP) whilst others help provide TOT (training of trainers) and conduct social audits.

Ugam has been involved in training all stakeholders in the MREGS process, from village development officers, or gram sevaks, to members of vigilance and social audit committees.

On behalf of the district administration, Ugam provided a days training in the MREGS to groups of 20 people from 711 villages in the district, in two stages, during January and March 2008. The training was conducted in clusters of 10 villages each, by around 60 trainers who had earlier received three days of training by Ugam. For the first batch of village-level trainings, Ugam mobilised resource persons from organisations like CASA, Mahatma Phule Samaj Seva Mandal in Solapur, and Sampark, Mumbai.

As government initiatives are often slow, Ugam printed and distributed around 2 lakh MREGS forms in January 2008, including forms for registering, applying for work and applying for unemployment allowance.

Ugam has a major strength in Hingoli: it runs government-funded libraries in remote areas. Each library covers five villages and many library personnel are engaged in monitoring and guiding MREGS and EGS implementation at the village level.

One of the main problems with implementing the MREGS in Hingoli is opposition by vested interests at the grassroots level, says Paikrao. Government figures show that while Rs 50.87 crore was available for the scheme in the district in 2007-2008, only Rs 12.42 crore was spent till March 31, 2008.

Ugam library worker Bapurao Ghongde says that although Pimpaldari gram panchayat received funds for the MREGS, to the tune of Rs 800,019, not a single rupee had been spent till July 2008.

As in other parts of Maharashtra, the main opposition to the MREGS comes from gram sevaks: they have gone on a virtual strike and are refusing to accept any applications for work.

In Pimpaldari, even the sarpanch has refused to accept applications. The people are too poor and unorganised to appeal to the block-level administration.

Ghongde says gram sevaks even refuse to take the TOT programmes seriously. They dismiss it as a time pass programme and rarely bother to send people with appropriate backgrounds for training. People were just rounded up and sent in jeeploads.

Consequently, most TSPs have little or no links with the village and this is reflected in the quality of estimates prepared.

MREGS procedures and norms were openly flouted, as in Sonwadi, Aundha block, where over 50 labourers were hired in April-May 2008 to construct farm ponds and other structures under the scheme. They were later told that sanction had not been granted for the work and so their wages would not be paid.

Senior officials in the district administration allege that difficulties with getting the MREGS to work stem from the fact that the mindset of the government machinery is fixed on the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) which has been running in the state for years, with mixed success.

The machinery is comfortable with this scheme that has little transparency and no provision for peoples involvement in planning and monitoring.

Gram sevaks, understandably, are apprehensive about working under the MREGS. In many cases they have been sending reports indicating that there is no demand for work.

Another problem is that while the EGS has been merged with the MREGS, certain provisions of the older scheme have been retained although they do not fit within the MREGS. For instance, under EGS provisions only new assets must be created. The NREGS (National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme), on the other hand, says that whatever measures people suggest for water conservation should be taken up, including the repair of old assets. This ends up confusing gram sabhas about whether they can take up work like desilting of tanks whose structure is still intact.

There is also confusion about whether or not machinery can be used in carrying out the works.

Significant successes

There have, however, been some significant successes in Hingoli. One is utilisation of a provision in the MREGS that allows construction of irrigation facilities for the benefit of land owned by scheduled caste (SC) or scheduled tribe (ST) households, beneficiaries of land reforms or the Indira Awas Yojana.

The first such beneficiary was Rajkumar Ganpat Kale who had a well dug under the MREGS on his land at Kakardhaba village, Aundha block. Construction was completed in April 2008. Around the rim of the well are inscribed the names of labourers who worked on the project.

The estimate prepared for the well has been accepted as a standard for implementation of similar works throughout the state. The chief driver of the effort was the deputy collector of Hingoli district, Y T Khadse, who is also an executive engineer.

Khadse recounts that when a team of MREGS assistant programme officers from Aurangabad went to Andhra Pradesh a few years ago, to assess the performance of the NREGS there, they noticed farm ponds and wells constructed under the scheme, on the lands of SC/ST households. Likewise, in Khargol in Madhya Pradesh, near Burhanpur, farm ponds have been built for SC/STs under a zilla parishad effort.

Khadse notes that under the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY), precursor to the NREGS, farm ponds and wells were popular. In a target-based approach, around 200 wells were dug at a cost of Rs 60,000 each in Hingoli district.

Khadse and the administration decided to do the same kind of work through the MREGS. They used similar specifications as far as diameter and depth were concerned; only the cost had to be revised, to Rs 160,000 per well.

When the administration sent the proposal to the state government, it ruled that the budget per well was much above the expenditure incurred under the JRY (Rs 60,000 per well). Khadse and others pointed out that the JRY wells had been built on a matching-grant basis: the beneficiary had to put in the rest of the required money, and, as many were unable to do so the wells remained incomplete.

The matter dragged on for over a year and a half and eventually it was agreed that farm ponds and wells could be built on private land under the MREGS at an expenditure of up to Rs 160,000. The precedent set in Hingoli became the norm for the state.

The Hingoli administration then moved fast. Gram sevaks, talathis and sarpanchs were told to keep lists of potential beneficiaries ready. Sarpanchs and talathis were given powers to certify whether a beneficiary truly belonged to a SC/ST household or was a beneficiary of land allotted under the Indira Awas Yojana.

A problem arose with the clause specifying the ratio of skilled and unskilled labour. Again it was argued that farm ponds and such works called for technical skills, therefore the ratio of 60:40 could not be strictly enforced.

Between April and August 2008, over 100 proposals for the construction of wells on the plots of SC/ST and Indira Awas Yojana beneficiary households in Hingoli were prepared. Till August 8, 2008, 50 had been approved. Plans are afoot to link sericulture and horticulture schemes to the beneficiaries.

Other works under the MREGS are also picking up in the district thanks to the keen interest taken by officials in the district administration like Khadse, and the work done by CSOs like Ugam. While only Rs 12.42 was spent under the scheme in 2007-2008 in the district, Rs 12.70 crore was spent in in the first four months of 2008-09.