Today, in some rural areas of India, labourers work only 100 to 120 days a year. Thanks to the massive intervention and mobilisation of NGOs, trade unions and popular movements, they have been granted the right to work 100 additional days per year. Under pressure from many Indian organisations, the government voted the Employment Guarantee Act (EGA [1]) on August 24th 2005, thereby pledging to create more jobs. The government decided not to resort to private companies for public works any longer but to encourage manual work instead of using machines.

A year later, the numerous Indian associations that collaborated to produce this Programme are still mobilised. Among them, the FEDINA association which fights notably for the right to work and to form trade unions. FEDINA participates actively in this Programme with the support of other groups of the Social Action Network to which it belongs, bringing together 25 member groups. They work together in several districts such as Bidar in Kernataka or Thiruvannamalai, Cuddalore and Villipuram in Tamil Nadu. These areas have been selected by the Programme because they register high unemployment and poverty levels.

Over the past few months, associations of the Network operating in these districts - FEDINA, District Labour Union, Society for Upliftment of Rural Poor and Dalit Land Rights Federation - organised seminars and meetings that allowed them to elaborate a common project: using the EGA law as a tool for the unionization of farm workers. To start with, they developed this strategy with a national independent trade union – the New Trade Union Initiatives (NTUI) -, and then with all mobilised organisations and trade unions of the country during a major meeting organised by the NTUI on 7th and 8th June of this year.

The Network activity also consists of informing and making vulnerable rural populations aware of the issue. Through this programme, labourers are forced to sign up to application lists to get their job card; but many of them do not trust the government anymore and do not see any interest in getting that card. It’s a hard job but efforts done by the groups of the Network bear their fruits. In Bidar, the work done by the District labour Union allowed the registration of more than 5,000 people in villages where the groups operate. Members of the organisation launched a major campaign over more than 56 days, crossing villages, organising debates in the streets, distributing leaflets, informing people of the importance of the programme and of the registration process, etc.

But their job does not only consist of making people aware of the registration process, they also work actively with authorities so as to ensure that workers’ rights are respected. For example, on August 7th of this year, they blocked the Human Resources office of the tanuk [2] to claim for the payment of wages that had been delayed for more than 2 months. The campaign launched by these groups is far from over. As Duarte Barreto from FEDINA explains, “as long as the government has not decided to raise the minimum wage – which is today ranged between 60/70 rupees per day – to 120 rupees and as long as there are no trade unions in the agricultural sector, we will keep on fighting.”

Also read: Résonances Asia N°6 - September 2006