Mainstream WeeklyIndia is among very few developing countries to have a rural employment guarantee scheme. Apart from providing employment during the lean farm work season, this scheme can make a big contribution to important needs like water and soil conservation. Workers can get employment within or very near to their village on the kind of work which improves the sustainable development prospects of their village.
Under this law people of any village can ask for employment according to simple procedures described in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), and employment must be provided to them within a fixed period.
The guarantee aspect is supposed to be ensured by an additional provision in the law that if employment is not provided within the stipulated period, then a compensatory payment will be made to all those workers who had demanded employment.
However this was watered down by the authorities by shrewdly adding that such payment will be provided subject of availability of funds.
On the whole the compensatory aspect has been implemented only very rarely, and this is how the guarantee aspect of the pioneering legislation has been weakened.
Hence it was particularly courageous on the part of the women workers from poor households in a very remote village Dhok (located in the desert district of Barmer in Rajasthan) to stand up with determination for their right to get the compensatory payment. As they had demanded work using the proper legal procedure but did not get employment, they showed a lot of determination in raising the demand for compensation. When they did not get the payment, helped by a