Right to Food Campaign
 

UPDATE 40: COUNTDOWN FOR EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE?

Dear friends,

This is the first "right to food update" after a long gap, largely due to technical problems. Hopefully, regular updates will resume from now on.

Big news today: the Indian Parliament is about to enact a National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. This proposed Act is due to be discussed in Parliament tomorrow (Wednesday 17 August), and is likely to be passed within the next two weeks.

Under this Act, any adult who is willing to do casual manual labour at the statutory minimum wages will have a legal right to be employed on public works within 15 days. However, the proposed Act has many weaknesses and it remains to be seen whether it will be strengthened before being passed in Parliament.

For further details, and a whole series of relevant documents and articles, see www.righttofoodindia.org (the website of the right to food campaign). The following items are pasted below:

1. Call for action: Dharna at Jantar Mantar (New Delhi) on 18 August.

DHARNA FOR EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE ON 18 AUGUST

A one-day dharna will be held at Jantar Mantar (New Delhi) on Thursday 18 August, to protest against the flaws of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill (NREGB) and demand immediate pro-people amendments. The dharna may be followed by other forms of action including a hunger strike.

The "revised" NREGB is expected to be discussed in Parliament on 17 August. The revised Bill has not yet been made public, but it is almost certain to have major flaws, such as the absence of any time frame for extension to the whole of rural India and the absence of individual work entitlements. The main objective of the dharna on 18 August is to ensure that the Bill is suitably amended before being placed and passed, within the monsoon session of Parliament which ends on 26 August.

Please join the dharna (and possible hunger strike) in full strength. The dharna will start at 10 am on 18 August and will continue for the whole day.

This is a follow-up of the Rozgar Adhikar Yatra (which travelled through ten states before the monsoon session in Parliament), an initiative of People?s Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG). For further information please send a line to rozgar@gmail.com or call Kamal (9810060481), Annie (9811553633), Kaustav (9891050213), Navjyoti (9350530150), Subhash (9810810365), or the "Yatra mobile" (9868888127). A preparatory meeting is likely to take place on 16 August, after the revised Bill is made public.

2. Employment Guarantee Act: Key documents

Background material on the EGA, e.g. primer on EGA, the NAC draft, the government's draft, critique of the government's draft, the Standing Committee's report, etc. are available online at http://www.righttofoodindia.org/rtowork/ega_keydocs.html.

3. Selected articles