Introduction

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA hereafter) enacted by the Indian Parliament in 2005, created a legal, justiciable ‘right to work’ for all households in rural India. Adult members of all rural households were now eligible to ‘demand’ work on publicly funded worksites, for ‘at least’ a hundred days per household per financial year.

This chapter looks at how the text of rights defined under the NREGA interacts with a politics of claiming rights from the state. It draws on the work of the Jagrut Adivasi Dalit Sangathan (JADS), an indigenous people's collective working in Barwani district in south west Madhya Pradesh, examining the strategies adopted by members of the collective to seek work under the NREGA in the initial years after its implementation. Further, by using the example of Barwani district, the chapter highlights that NREGA implementation at the district level involves a varied set of institutional and civil society actors (Figure 14.1, annexed). It is suggested that novel rights defined under the NREGA can be drawn on for varied, and sometimes competing political agendas. It is argued, therefore, that the process of implementation of ‘rights’ under the NREGA is far from linear, and generates a new layer in the ‘production’ of local politics.

This chapter looks at the period between 2006 and 2009, i.e., the first three years of NREGA implementation. The empirical material presented in this paper draws on ethnographic field work, on letters and memoranda (or, gyapan) submitted by the JADS membership to the local state and other civil society organisations regarding implementation of public works programmes, and on secondary literature on the Government of Madhya Pradesh and the central government's role in NREGA implementation. The next section starts with a discussion on the Jagrut Adivasi Dalit Sangathan and strategies adopted by its members to claim work under NREGA. Section three discusses the engagement of the central government and the Government of Madhya Pradesh with NREGA implementation. Section four highlights the work of civil society actors other than JADS engaged in NREGA implementation in Barwani district, Madhya Pradesh, and section five is the concluding section.