From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

4 RISK AND VULNERABILITY SOCIAL PROTECTIONHOW CHANGE HAPPENS CASE STUDY:INDIA’S CAMPAIGN FOR A NATIONAL RURALEMPLOYMENT GUARANTEEFor the first time in history, citizens of rural India are nowguaranteed a job. Within 15 days of a valid application, thegovernment is legally obliged to provide 100 days of unskilledwork per year on public works programmes. Activists, politicians,and academics have hailed the National Rural EmploymentGuarantee Act (NREGA), passed in August 2005, as vital forimproving the lot of rural workers.The Act was born of drought and rural distress in the state ofRajasthan, where civil society networks denounced the failure ofpublic food distribution and employment programmes to preventstarvation. Activists submitted a petition to the Supreme Court in2001 on the ‘Right to Food’, which received favourable interimdirectives. Encouraged, they drafted a Rajasthan StateEmployment Guarantee Act in 2003, though this was notimplemented.However, the activists’ success in rallying civil society reflectedthe growth of rights-based approaches in India, favouring ademand-based system over the passive beneficiary employmentprogrammes of the past.From 2001, Congress Party leaders, including party presidentSonia Gandhi, raised the issue in the national party. Congresshad been in opposition nationally since 1996, but held power inRajasthan. In 2003, the party suffered a demoralising loss in theRajasthan election and in other states, leading most to believethat it had no chance in the 2004 national election.Luckily for NREGA activists, impending political defeat weakenedthe resistance of fiscal conservatives in the Congress leadershipto a potentially costly employment guarantee, and also gaveimpetus to those who argued that Congress needed a strong,positive policy programme to revive its fortunes. These factorsled to an employment guarantee being included in the 2004Congress national manifesto.Although unrelated to its presence in the manifesto, theCongress alliance’s surprise victory in the 2004 general election,and its formation of a majority government with the support ofCASE STUDY217