The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) has come as a saviour for hundreds of agricultural labourers and small and marginal farmers in Honna Kiranagi village in Kalaburagi district.
As farmers were not able to take up sowing for the kharif season owing to the failure of the south west monsoon this year, landless agricultural labourers and small and marginal farmers were the worst hit. With no employment available in agriculture fields, the landless labourers were left with no other alternative but to migrate to urban pockets in search of jobs.
Then came the decision of the Honna Kiranagi Gram Panchayat to take up the work on planting saplings on the boundary of the proposed super-critical thermal power plant on the outskirts of the village. It has opened up employment avenues for nearly 600 workers a day.
Besides digging trenches for planting three rows of saplings, the Forest Department has taken a decision to dig a 6 ft x 2 ft trench to store rain water to retain moisture on the land.
Parvathi Bai, an aged agricultural labourer, told The Hindu that but for the work taken up under the MNREGA, a majority of landless agricultural labourers would have migrated to bigger cities.
Suvarna, a home maker and an agricultural labourer, said that this year she did not get even a single day’s work due to the failure of the monsoon. “This year is a bad year for us…we don’t know what future holds for us….,” she said.
Chandrakant and his wife Siddavva had migrated from Gobbur village in Afzalpur taluk to Honna Kiranagi in search of jobs. The work taken up under the MNREGA has come as a blessing in disguise to them.
Honna Kiranagi was one of the few villages in Kalaburagi district known for its prosperity due to the fertile land in and around the village. After the acquisition of over 1,600 acres of land for the proposed thermal plant and another 2,000 acres for the proposed cement plant, the village is practically left with no agriculture land for tilling, as per official records.
However, agriculturists who had lost their land continue to cultivate on their land as neither the thermal plant nor the cement factory had come into existence.
