The Work Lasted Five Days. So the Workers Went and Asked for the Rest

The road from Bajpur Bankati towards Jangutara Saiphan was built by people who had been promised a hundred days.

Work under the rural employment guarantee started in the forest villages on 15 November 2009. It ran for five days and stopped. For households with almost no other dependable earning, five days is not security. It is a week of wages and then the same uncertainty as before.

What the workers had that they had not had earlier was procedure. Information sessions had gone through the programme in detail - the forms, the forums, and the part most people had never been told: that work can be formally demanded rather than waited for.

They used four routes in four weeks.

First, a procession at Jangutara Bridge demanding employment. Fourteen consecutive days of work followed, authorised through the Gram Panchayat officer.

Second, on 3 December, five members of the Vangram Adhikar Manch met the Block Development Officer with the relevant forms in hand and raised the delays directly. Administrative directions followed, and workers were engaged on soil-filling at Talika Purwa.

Third, when wages did not arrive, more than a hundred women and men from Chehlawa Gram Panchayat went to the Girijapuri post office on 4 December, which is where the payment actually sits. ₹60,000 was released that day.

Fourth, on 15 December, a social audit brought more than 700 workers together to go through the record in public. Out of that meeting they formed the Mazdoor Haqdari Morcha, so that the next delay would not require starting from nothing.

The wages and the workdays are the visible result. The durable one is the platform, and the knowledge of which door to knock on for which problem: the Panchayat for work, the block office for orders, the post office for payment, the public audit for the record.

They used four routes in four weeks.