DOWN TO EARTH Sunita Narain / New Delhi February 26, 2008 It was the mid-1980s, environmentalist Anil Agarwal was on a mission: to track down the person who had conceptualised the employment guarantee scheme in Maharashtra. His hunt (I tagged along) led him to a dusty, file-paper filled office in the secretariat. There we met V S Page. I remember a diminutive, soft-spoken man, who explained to us why in 1972 when the state was hit with crippling drought and mass migration of people, it had worked on a scheme under which professionals working in cities would pay for employment in villages. This employment was guaranteed by law, which meant it provided an entitlement and put a floor to poverty. Because work was available locally, people did not have to move to cities in distress. Anil was excited, not just by the need to provide employment during acute stress, but also its potential to use employment for ecological regeneration. We had just visited Ralegan Siddi village where Anna Hazare was overseeing work to dig trenches along the contours of hills to hold water and to recharge groundwater. On our visit, we saw the first bumper onion crop because of increased irrigation. Page agreed but explained to us that as the scheme was primarily designed for employment during acute distress, the district administration looked for the easiest way out, which in most cases was breaking stones, building roads or public work construction. Within the next few years, the idea to use this same labour for natural asset creation gained momentum. This was also the time when the country was learning how to plant trees that survive; or build the tank that would not get silted in the next season. Bureaucrat N C Saxena worked out if all the trees planted had survived there would be a forest in each Indian village
