On 3rd September, Sunday early morning, Mary (who was going back to Timbaktu after a visit to Kerala) came by and picked me up on her way back to Timbaktu. We went by a Sumo, one of the 3 vehicles owned by Timbaktu. It was a quick trip as we had a driver (Timbaktu employee) who was fast. We headed straight down to Anantapur town where the co-ordination office of the social audit was supposed to be.
(A note about Anantapur town: this trip was the first time I was there. I visited it several times over the course of the trip. Essentially nothing to report, but partly because I didn't really get to do anything much there.)
We had a meeting at the office to discuss duties and other matters, and there was not much interest other than from Mary in having me do documentation or press release work there, so we relieved myself from that role. We headed back later and then went to the site of one of the padayatra teams for the evening full-village meeting. The way the padayatra was structured, during the day, the team members would interact with the government officials, go through the documents, and inspect the work done to see if it was all 'kosher'. In the evening there would be a meeting of the village 'gram sabha', the full population of the village to explain about NREGA, go over the results of the mornings' work and then to read out the muster roll. So I and Mary were joining for the evening meeting. The village was called Mushtikovila BTW, and has some other interest which I will touch on later.
There was a bunch of smaller stuff that happened, but not of much interest so I'll stick to the main points:
Earlier in the day, the padayatra group had spent time in the fields measuring and inspecting the work done and comparing it to what the records said. During the evening meeting they went over this and also read out the muster roll. What happens with the muster roll is :
For each piece of work done, each worker's name is read out, the number of days he worked is read out and the amount the records show him as having got is read out. This simple act contains a world of difference in it and can, if the atmosphere is right, be a completely electric moment. The reason is, this is absolutely the first time in independant India (and a couple of hundred years before that too) that the government official is being held accountable. Firstly, getting access to the muster roll and other records is in itself a HUGE thing. This is something that absolutely no common citizen can normally imagine happening -- getting access to the real records where the actual stuff goes on. ( Actually, this has changed with passing of the RTI Act which is why that act is so momentous too. The Social Audit is really very intimately linked with RTI at its essence, and so doing a social audit of NREGA, is to me a sort of ecstatic climax of good governance. :-)
Getting back to the point. So having got the documents, you are now standing in the middle of the entire village sabha and reading out 'x did this much work and the record says he got paid this much. did he ?'. And if he didn't, all eyes turn to the government official and he is on the hot spot. The first time I saw this process happening at Mushtikovila village, it was like the proverbial 'hair standing on end'. Even growing up in a relatively well-to-do family and having advantages that come with that, the simple act of having the documentation and being able to question a government official is something I've never seen. And personally (though I'm sure its true of many others) the empowerment of this process is hugely liberating and fulfilling. I wish something like this comes to urban local bodies too.
So this is approximately what happened for the 6 days of the padayatra across 600 villages of Anantapur. I'm sure the process did not go as it was supposed to, in each and every village for various reasons but its a big step forward for accountability and good governance.
Here are some notes:
-- There was a team of people from MKSS who were here to help out. Only one of them knew Telugu, so the help from the others was limited, they were there more as observers. However the one person who know Telugu (Sowmya Kidambi) was pretty fantastic. She knew a lot about the government workflow and internal rules, in fact she knew a lot more than the government officials, who were not properly trained, and she often gave them a earful. She was quite a fiery person (quite young too), and fearless. Quite remarkable. Without someone like that who is well-trained and has the gift, the process can flounder sometimes. The meeting dynamic can be quite delicate and despite the revolutionary nature of what was happening people sometimes get bored or disengaged. Other times the other thing happens, and the entire village gets into an explosion of anger or heated debate as some facts get uncovered and the process breaks down there too.
-- In NREGA, the payments ar made through post office money accounts. In one of the villages, it came out that the village postmaster had been deducting 10 Rs from some of the people under false pretexts. The postmaster was asked to come to the front and explain his action, and it was made very clear in front of everybody that he was basically eating money. That kind of situation is the tremendous power of the process -- uncovering of the 'money trail' and finding the culprits behind it and being able to get them up on stage immediately
-- all kinds of existing vested interests and existing village power structures and dynamics come into the picture and start complicating it. This is only to be expected. For example on one day in village Nagasamudram, we uncovered hanky-panky by one gentleman and he got a pretty solid public shaming from Soumya. The next day was village Obulampalli where his son-in-law was Panchayat Secretary. The process in Obulampalli went completely haywire and the meeting was stopped prematurely even before the key muster roll reading happened. I cannot be quite sure of what the reason was, but some of the villagers told us that the Panchayat Secretary called people individually into his house, served them lots of liquor and instructed them that as a matter of village honour, they should say that everything went fine, and that they should disrupt the meeting and not let it happen. THis is exactly what happened.
-- There was quite effective use of cultural techniques (songs, dance, musical instruments, puppetry) in conveying the ideas of NREGA. One thing that Timbaktu Collective and other rural NGOs do, is write topical songs on things that they are trying to convey. I did a post sometime back on the puppetry they used. I've always felt the extreme limitation of popular urban music (especially western pop) -- jeez they go on and on and on about love love love ad infinitum, is there nothing else to write about ? I think that there is some deep truth to be uncovered here -- why is it that pop musicians are simply unable to deal with the many problems of modern life and they are stuck dealing just with love-related themes. Anyway these village songs are very vital in the way they directly address the real issues. The MKSS people sang some of the hindi songs that they had and these were really very moving and powerful. One of the visitors was Shankar Singh who was an expert with a 'sock puppet' that he had brought with him and did his puppetry at the meetings to much enjoyment of everyone. Shankar Singh is one of the guys described in some detail in Bapu Kuti, so it was great for me to get to meet him.
Photos from the padayatra in the next post
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