And yet, until the third week of June 2008, hardly anyone in Adgaon Sarak had heard of the scheme and nobody was interested in getting benefits from it.

Its not that the 3,600-odd people of the village do not need the NREGS.

The village is located in a barren, rain-fed region and suffers one major disadvantage. It is at the base of a steep ghat that cannot be easily crossed by vehicle, even today. The last few kilometres of the road to the village is kutcha and difficult to negotiate. People say the condition of the road was worse some decades ago; vehicular traffic to Adgaon Sarak started only in the 1990s.

A small lake some distance away, in a valley, meets the irrigation and drinking water needs of the villagers. Towards the end of summer, people have to walk long distances to collect water.

Most dalit families are landless and a live off agriculture and other labour.

For around 50 years, dalits and poor households from other communities such as Muslims have been gradually occupying degraded forestland on the hill slope, and cultivating it.

Efforts to regularise the occupation of these gairan dharaks, led by PACS Programme CSO Paryay, have not yet been successful. Crops of gairan dharaks are frequently destroyed by resentful upper caste landlords.

Productivity of the degraded hill slope land is anyway low, and labour remains the main source of income for families without large holdings of fertile land close to the water source.

Ibrahim Sultan, a casual labourer in the village, says: Every day there are 200-400 of us who need work.

The NREGS is ideally suited to these conditions. Apart from providing guaranteed employment at a minimum wage, it can lead to the construction of assets such as water-harvesting structures that could help people tide over the water crisis, and increase agricultural production.

However, till June 2008, not a single project was started in the village under the Maharashtra Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MREGS), the state-specific scheme notified under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).

Local officials had made some effort to enrol families under the scheme, and around 600 job cards were distributed in the village amidst considerable confusion and expense. Says Ramnath Mokale, one of the card-holders: We had to take photographs thrice at our expense. First we were asked to bring passport-sized pictures, then we were asked to bring pictures of couples, then we were told the pictures were the wrong size We spent around Rs 100 on getting job cards. Some illiterate people paid an additional five to ten rupees to get their forms filled.

Around May 2008, people were given some information on the MREGS by panchayat officials. But the information was either inadequate or incomprehensible.

Until the third week of June 2008, nobody in Adgaon Sarak knew that one had to file an application to get work under the MREGS; that provision of work is mandatory; and that the government had to pay an unemployment allowance if work was not handed out.

This information was procured only after Paryay organised a five-day MREGS awareness campaign in the village, under the PACS Programmes NREGS Campaign 2008 (read about the campaign here).

The results were dramatic: Around 300 people from the village, including 145 women, submitted demands for work on June 22, 2008. The demands were fully justified. The rains, and, consequently, sowing operations in the region had been delayed. As a result there was no work locally available. Rukmanibai Dange, a woman labourer, says: There is demand for work for 500 people in the village.

Paryay has put the villages case before the districts EGS collector and people are awaiting a positive response. Ramnath Mokale says: If it comes to that, at least 50 of us are ready to stage a dharna before the district collectorate.

People from neighbouring villages have also started submitting applications for work, reports Paryay.

The PACS Programme campaign mobilised people and officials in other places too. In Jalna, a district that came under the NREGS only in April 2008:

• The authorities in Chinchked village, Ambad taluka, started MREGS work within three days of the start of the campaign, employing around 30 persons who had applied for work.
• In Manegaon, Jalna taluka, payment was immediately arranged for people who had worked under the EGS in April-May 2008.
• In Chincholi, Ghansangvi taluka, the block development officer and deputy chief executive officer of the zilla parishad issued orders to the gram sevak and talathi to ensure that registration forms were filled and job cards issued.

In Brahmangaon, Parbhani taluka, Parbhani district, people who traditionally enter into annual labour contracts with farmers got themselves registered under the MREGS. In Gadchiroli, MREGS vigilance committees were activated in the nine villages of five talukas covered by the campaign. A similar impact was seen in Yavatmal.

More such outcomes are expected after CSOs take up advocacy issues at the village and district level, in the next phase of the campaign.