Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

Migrant Tribal Women’s Struggle for Livelihood 125
labour in adjoining rural areas to working on construction sites in distant
urban locations. Most tribals move within the state to growth centres
like Indore, Hoshangabad and Harda, or in adjoining states, to Bilaspur
in Chhattisgarh, Dhulia and Nagpur in Maharashtra, or Vadodara, Surat
and Ahmedabad in Gujarat.
By and large, the employment opportunities available to the migrants
are the worst paying, involving high exploitation and requiring the least
skills. Migration affects the households, leading to a break in their family
lives, the non-availability of social security systems like education, health
facilities, group solidarity and subsidised food grains from the PDS. The
living conditions of migrants in their urban destinations are very poor,
affecting their health and, hence, productivity. Many times they are also
forced into a debt trap by contractors who give them advances for the
next season to ensure the availability of their cheap labour in the future.
As soon as the season begins, the contractors pack them off to distant
locations to work as agricultural labour, construction workers, or in other
labour-intensive industries, where relatively low skills are required. Tribals
are preferred over others as they are less demanding and are in a more
vulnerable position (Joshi: 1999).
In such a situation, tribals need such programmes that assure them
employment in their homeland. It will help in redressing the balance of
social, economic and political power a little in favour of the downtrodden
classes. However, a study of the impact of state intervention through
programmes for the poverty-stricken tribal women is of special importance,
not only for public policy, but also to know the grassroots realities.
This chapter seeks to examine the effectiveness of the EAS in the tribal
Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh and explores measures that can make
state intervention in support of the women more effective.
METHODOLOGY
The chapter is based on a study undertaken by the author in Jhabua district
on the ‘Overall Working of Employment Assurance Scheme’. The main
objectives are to examine the organisational and administrative set-up
under the Panchayati Raj system in relation to the EAS; to examine the
impact of the programme on the women beneficiaries in terms of changes
in occupational status, income and employment; and to review the