Gram Panchayat to municipality: An upgrade these village residents dread

It will rob them of MNREGS benefits, may trigger job losses, migrations

Bhagya and her family, residents of Hosa Malapanagudi, Hosapete, face the threat of losing their livelihood once the government upgrades their gram panchayat (GP) into a town municipality.

Her family of five is entirely dependent on Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) for livelihood.

The government has proposed to include their village under urban limits, which means they will no longer qualify for the rural employment scheme.

Many like them are now appealing to the government to let them remain as a village.

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“Under MGNREGS, we are guaranteed nine months’ employment. We do not have lands to fall back on. We will find it difficult to find alternative employment,” Bhagya told DH.

Lakshmi and Jainashree, resources persons at Sakhi Trust, a nonprofit based in Hosapete, explain that at least 45% of the people in this taluk are dependent on MGNREGS for employment.

MGNREGS is not merely about employment, but also about the conservation of local resources.

Under MGNREGS, they take up tree planting, the building of agri ponds, and other such activities.

The repercussions of urbanising these villages are also that parents will stop sending children to school and child marriages will increase.

According to data available with the Rural Development & Panchayat Raj Department, the government has upgraded 126 GPs into municipalities over the last six years.

Government officials acknowledge that the threat to livelihood is a reality in these cases.

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Requesting anonymity, one official gave the example of Belagavi, “In this district, seven GPs were upgraded into municipalities. Many residents are still looking for jobs. With a majority of them being illiterate and lacking other skills, they cannot find work even in the garment sector.”

In some districts of North Karnataka, while the men migrate to neighbouring states for labour, MGNREGS provides convenience for women to find employment near their homes, the official says, underlining the significance of the employment scheme.

RDPR principal secretary L K Atheeq says programmes such as MGNREGS and Jal Jeevan Mission are meant only for rural areas and when a GP is upgraded to an urban area, they lose these schemes, causing difficulty to vulnerable families.

“If these schemes were insulated from the rural-urban categorisation, there would be an incentive for rural areas with urban character to get upgraded as towns,” he adds.

Officials who spoke to DH also point out how urbanisation does not necessarily guarantee a better lifestyle for citizens as new town panchayats hardly have any funds for infrastructure development.

They say that urbanising panchayats is often a politically motivated decision as elected representatives get a larger civic body to control.

Several GPs are agriculture-centric and if such villages are included in municipalities merely based on their population, employment will be a challenge, they say.

R Balasubramanian, founder of Grassroots Research and Advocacy Movement (GRAAM), concurs.

“Urbanisation does not happen by declaring a panchayat as an urban local body. Urbanisation is a derivative of several factors, including changing economic dependence of people, population density and concentrated delivery of civic services,” he says.

Before declaring a panchayat as an urban local body, the government has to hold consultations with experts, apart from promising civic amenities.

Without these amenities, people will have no choice but to migrate to other places, he observes.

The clamour for urbanization could drive out people like Rudrappa in search of livelihood.

This Hosapete resident fears that even civic amenities’ tariff (electricity and water supply) will go up in a municipality.

“Our expenses will go up and our income will come down. We will have to migrate to cities like Bengaluru in search of jobs.”

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