In Karnataka’s mining affected areas, women fear reversal of rural employment guarantee gains

​When illegal mining was stopped, women in Hospet found regular income in the rural employment guarantee scheme, just like many others across India. They now fear that the new version _ VBGRAMG _ will roll back their situation to the days of endless migration in search of daily wages

Bhanumathi Kalluri

Women on their way to MGNREGS work in Hospet, Karnataka(2019). Photo credit: Sakhi

Hospet in Vijayanagara district (erstwhile Ballary), Karnataka, experienced a boom in iron ore mining in the late nineties and early 2000s. When large-scale illegal mining was suddenly halted after years of exploitation of land and people, the impact on local farmers, landless poor and mine workers was severe. Many migrant families who had come to Hospet from surrounding districts and other states had nowhere to go. They could not find work in the mines anymore and farmers could not go back to farming as their lands and water bodies were ruined by irresponsible mining. All livelihood and economic opportunities collapsed. Suddenly, the men could find no other work that fetched similar wages.

Refusing to come to terms with the changed economic scenario or work for lesser wages, they became idle and violent. Domestic violence as a result of the men’s addiction to alcohol and quick money from mining, the loans accumulated for purchasing mining trucks, motorbikes, mobile phones and other distractions compounded the distress of unemployment for the women.

Entire villages migrated to other districts for sugarcane cutting, construction and agricultural labour for prolonged periods after mining was abandoned. When back home, women had to walk long distances to surrounding villages and work for low wages in agriculture and construction work which were inconsistent and inadequate, while loans accumulated.

The distress looked too insurmountable to address, whether to reduce child labour, restore agriculture for farmers, rescue Devadasi women from sexual abuse or find strategies to help people overcome hunger. As women’s rights groups, Sakhi and Dhaatri have been trying to represent the gendered impacts of mining and engage with governance institutions for accountability towards affected communities. We have been advocating for eradication of child and exploitative labour in the mines, and to find dignified economic redress for marginalised women.

In Hospet the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005, better known as MGNREGS, offered the only lifeline for alternate employment and women in the villages started collectivizing for job cards and wage labour. Between the year 2010 and now, close to one thousand women from 16-18 villages and mining camps in Hospet came forward slowly and hesitantly to test the power of MGNREGS as Sakhi had to find alternatives to mining for the women to survive.

Dalit women cleaning water canals as part of MGNREGS work  in Hospet, Karnataka(2023). Photo Credit: Sakhi

Given the low wages paid to women, what fetched them income for eight hours of work in the mines or in agriculture, could be earned through half a day of MGNREGS work. It also offered them the flexibility to take care of their families or supplement these wages with other miscellaneous jobs locally.

In the last 15 years since the mines closed down MGNREGS became a tool for women’s economic transformation and to reduce distress migration. They realised that persistent collective negotiation to fight local corruption in MGNREGS work allotment and payments could lead to income opportunities, without having to constantly migrate for work.

MICRO PLANS AND NEGOTIATIONS

It is true that MGNREGS funds alone were barely adequate to rehabilitate the mining affected area or provide even the 100 days of promised employment while it took several seasons of struggle for women to gain even these bare benefits. Yet it served as an entry strategy to build linkages with other state and non-state interventions of restoring livelihoods, cleaning up contaminated water bodies and polluted lands through these minimum wages.

Women learnt to prepare village micro plans and negotiate with their panchayat leaders on what works they wanted to take up, taught themselves to measure and calculate their implemented work and payments due, formed women’s groups to help each other get job cards and work allotment, while navigating the difficult spaces of governance institutions.

Dalit women discussing MGNREGS micro plans for restoration of agriculture and irrigation tanks in Hospet, Karnataka(2021). Photo credit: Sakhi

The micro plans prepared by women included cleaning up of water bodies polluted by mining, clearing lands used as mine dumps, restoring irrigation tanks, building check dams and soil bunds, desilting and land filling where soil was eroded, removing the overgrowth of weeds in agricultural lands due to years of abandoning cultivation, and widening the roads destroyed by the mining trucks.

For small and marginal farmers who could not bring their lands back to cultivation on their own, the MGNREGS came to their rescue in making their lands cultivable again.. Women also identified individual needs and fought for inclusion of cattle sheds, toilets, agricultural fences, kitchen gardens and housing in their micro plans as earlier, panchayat leaders would decide what to take up and to whom to allocate work, without consulting the women. They also took up planting of trees in forest lands that were encroached by mine owners, cleared common lands for grazing, raised nurseries and seed banks.

For many first generation educated youth of mine workers who did not have the means to afford higher education, the MGNREGS provided an opportunity to work for daily wages and self-finance their college fees. In Hospet, many dalit youth entered college thanks to these wages they got from MGNREGS.

Thus a coordinated work between an NGO, women from the communities and supportive district administration enabled both landscape transformation and livelihood restoration in small ways. The benefits of MGNREGS were experienced by women immensely  because of which they started campaigning for 100 days of work for each member of the family, in the place of 100 days of work for a household, given the distress of landless families in this economically backward region of North Karnataka.

Dalit women demanding for 100 days of work per person per family in Hospet, Karnataka(2022). Photo Credit: Sakhi

From a situation of utter helplessness where physical and sexual abuse were high, women could use MGNREGS, not only for the right to daily wage labour but also in strengthening their ability to negotiate for their social rights to dignity and safety in the domestic and public spaces.

Particularly for the Devadasis as single women confronted by physical and sexual abuse, it enabled them to provide for their food and for their children’s care in a post mine closure/abandoned mining scenario, without the vulnerability of depending on their abusive partners.

The MGNREGS intervention helped in linking with other state schemes like housing and drinking water facilities for mine workers, convergence with agriculture, horticulture and animal husbandry departments for small farmers. With help from private philanthropies Sakhi could build on the work initiated under the MGNREGS, through land restoration, strengthening farmers’ cooperatives for sustainable organic farming where support through seeds, natural fertilizers, agri-clinics and market linkages reinstated basic sustenance to several farmers who had lost hope of returning to agriculture.

A ‘JUST’ RESTORATION?

In the climate change discourse of Just Transition that has been particularly linked under the Ministry of Mines to closed and abandoned coal mines in India, the women’s accomplishments in iron-ore affected Hospet region through the MGNREGS is what could be called, just restoration of landscapes and livelihoods, including forest and common lands degraded by mining.

Despite women facing several challenges in MGNREGS like delayed payments, digital complications, non fulfilment of 100 days of work, to name a few, for a mining ravaged area like Hospet, the minimum employment guarantee under MGNREGS provided a slither of hope for survival. The lack of this guarantee or poor implementation of the same in other project / mining affected areas in the country has had grievous consequences on the lives of women and children.

In Telangana, for example, Adivasi communities who lost their land and forest for Singareni coal mines in Tiryani mandal of Asifabad, face serious challenges of food security, ill health due to land and water contamination and lack of livelihood opportunities other than to migrate for work to other states or get occasional work as daily wage labourers through contractors in the coal mines.

Even where the mines have been abandoned, engaging local communities for mine area restoration through the MGNREGS in directly affected villages like Jendaguda, Dantanapalli, Dorli, to name a few, has been barely implemented whereas information under the MGNREGS portal is absent. This has left the ST communities struggling to survive, having lost all the agricultural lands and access to the forest.

Similarly, relief through MGNREGS to mining affected communities in Madhya Pradesh like the Sahariyas and Gonds who are affected by unregulated mining and displacement by the Panna Tiger Reserve has been negligible.

While many of the directly affected ST families where Dhaatri works have not received any MGNREGS works in the last few years, those which received, got less than 50 days of work per household. This poor implementation is starkly evident in the high rates of migration where the STs are away from their villages for most parts of the year or depend on hazardous mine labour or construction work, leading to occupational diseases like tuberculosis and silicosis. 

Gond Adivasi women seek land restoration through MGNREGS in relocated villages of Panna, Madhya Pradesh(2025). Photo credit: Dhaatri

Given that other sources of livelihood have been made dysfunctional due to groundwater depletion and land degradation by mining, their vulnerability is thoroughly exploited by contractors to the extent that lives of these Adivasis are akin to bonded labour shifting from one place to another with no proper shelter or work safety.

Forced into seasonal migration, these communities have become excluded from other social security schemes by default. Their absence from the village for prolonged periods makes it impossible for them to collect their ration, pensions or medicines for TB and other diseases, in addition to not receiving any MGNREGS entitlements.

Poor MGNREGS implementation and distress migration have had a direct impact on children who are absent from school for most parts of the year, and eventually drop out to supplement the poor wages of their families. As most families are headed by widows or women who shoulder the burden of wage labour due to male members suffering from suspected silicosis and TB, children are compelled to become care givers or bread winners or both.

For example in 9 villages located around the Panna Tiger Reserve, out of 298 ST households, there are almost 139 widows. About 50-60% of the households migrate out of the village for work every year for several months. The MGNREGS data for 2023-24 shows that only two of these 9 villages got employment (Badour, an average of 49 days and Madala, an average of 45 days) and with no family touching the 100 days mark. More than 90 children belonging to the Sor and Nand Gonds are mostly out of school. 

Similarly in the mining affected Ganj Basoda block of Vidisha district, out of 540 Sahariya families in 11 villages, there are, approximately, 96 widows, and 86 silico-tuberculosis patients currently undergoing treatment (many others are unreported due to seeking private medical care or refusing to get diagnosed). On an average, 80% of the families migrate to nearby districts at frequent intervals and, atleast a quarter of the families migrate to other cities and states for longer periods every year, with high dependence on exploitative middle men /contractors.

We were able to find only one village out of these eleven which had received MGNREGS works during 2024-25 where 105 households in Sahba received 191 person days of work. Out of these, it is not clear how many Sahariya families got employment.

Between the years 2022-25 alone, close to 30 deaths have occurred in 9 villages, most of whom had suffered from Tuberculosis or suspected silico-tuberculosis and also suspected HIV/AIDS.  A head count of  children reveals that approximately 200 children have dropped out of school and migrate for work, mostly with their widowed mothers.

In a theatre workshop that we recently conducted with the children, several stories of sexual abuse and child labour were shared by the children when they are living in unprotected shelters at the migration sites. Boys start working in the mines from the ages of 13 and 14 and many of them are addicted to substances in order to cope with hunger and the strenuous work in the mines. Women, especially single women/widows who migrate for work, also narrated how they have to constantly deal with physical and sexual abuse at the work sites.

MIGRATION, A FORCED NECESSITY

Migration reduces the felt need of these communities in demanding either for MGNREGS or for all the other governance schemes because, when families are not even in the village, the Adivasis ask, ‘why demand for an anganwadi or a school or employment’.

For many NGOs like us working with these communities, building awareness on the hazards of unregulated mining becomes futile as the distress of hunger pushes communities into hazardous work, and not the lack of awareness of their work related hazards.

While officials may state that demand for MGNREGS has been lukewarm from the STs, the people’s unwillingness to demand for work also stems from their experience of insufficient work and delayed payments which they do not have the capacity to cope with.

Lack of demand for MGNREGS has multiple reasons, including ST families not having proper documents to apply for job cards, the challenges faced in the e-seva centres when they try to apply, other dominant communities taking away most of the work allocated to a village, STs being excluded from any micro planning and more importantly, their experiences of not receiving wages on time or not at all after many months of work.

Despite these challenges, Sahariya women in Ganj Basoda have been repeatedly submitting representations at the district level for employment guarantee locally.

Sahariya women submit representations to the District Collector's office for MGNREGS, pensions and livelihood support in Ganj Basoda, Madhya Pradesh(2025). Photo credit: Dhaatri

In Panna, the Gond women have been mapping their forest resources for submitting micro plans under the Community Forest Rights and to demand for MGNREGS to be linked to Community Forest Resource Management Plans and to complete the several pending works related to land development, water restoration and agriculture in villages which were relocated by the Panna Tiger Reserve.

After years of waiting, the women have taken upon themselves the task of clearing up the barren forest lands given to them as compensation and have started cultivation this year after Dhaatri provided support for equipment and labour through private foundations.  These works could have been included in the MGNREGS activities especially for widows who struggle to cope with feeding their families whether locally or during migration.

Gonds in Jhalar Khamariya, Panna, restoring their barren land received as compensation under the Panna tiger reserve, Madhya Pradesh( 2025). Photo credit: Dhaatri

In this backdrop, the introduction of the new Act, VB–G RAM G poses a renewed threat to the women’s survival when employment is not demand driven and guaranteed. In Hospet, the women have just heard about the new law and the many changes brought into it. There is clear worry among them that their only lifeline may crack.

Some of the loopholes of MGNREGS could have been addressed in ordersto bring qualitative improvements in the programme, and converge it with other special purpose funds for additional support. This would have the potential of bringing  land into productive use where long term economic goals are set for more sustainable rural development. Instead the new Act, Viksit Bharat–Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (VB–G RAM G) Act, 2025 poses a  serious threat to landless poor and marginal farmers and to communities who are affected by projects like mining, tiger reserves, or infrastructure projects which have displaced and continue to displace thousands of rural families from their lands.

While these projects have offered no effective alternatives of survival in rehabilitation programmes, and strategies of non-displacing development models have been few in the country, the MGNREGS came as the minimum saviour to communities who became locally resource poor. The increase to 125 days of work being promised under very reduced financial commitments from the Centre brings little hope that access to this guarantee will materialise.

WHAT WOMEN WANT: NEED FOR CONSULTATIONS ON VB–G RAM G

In most pockets of distress as in Hospet, Vidisha, Panna, among several other districts having high SC and ST populations, the demand is not just for a marginal increase per household to 125 days, but for per capita increase in availability of work days throughout the year so that migration doesn’t become a forced necessity for survival. Most job card holders could not get even the mandatory 100 days of work during the last few years when the Centre shouldered 90% of this demand driven legal entity.

Therefore, the women in Hospet, fear that dilution of MGNREGS as a minimum support to their incomes, would roll back their situation to the days of endless migration in search of daily wages. For those sections of very vulnerable populations in the country who have not adequately benefited from the employment guarantee, the future of alternatives to hazardous work becomes too distant a dream.

Highly vulnerable social groups and sections of informal labour working in hazardous industries like mining and other unorganised sectors need MGNREGS to be made more accessible immediately, and not weakened in its budgets, approaches and implementation modes, as is likely to happen in its new legal form.

Sahariya women discuss MGNREGS and DMF for employment regeneration in Ganj Basoda, Madhya Pradesh(2025). Photo credit: Dhaatri

For the landless poor women and marginal farmers, MGNREGS offered a collective and locally available employment guarantee not only within MGNREGS but vis-a-vis other sectors and allowed them some amount of flexibility in enduring their multiple caregiving and economic responsibilities.

The new version of MGNREGS/VBGRAMG is feared to be a roll back on all of these and has serious and direct implications on women as well as on children’s protection, food security, education and safety. Despite the emphasis of the new Budget 2026 on water security, rural livelihoods, mitigation of extreme weather vulnerabilities and bottom up micro planning, the allocation under the VBGRAMG is not expected to meet its own target of 125 days work guarantee, while state governments are not likely to heavy lift their share of 40% allocation.

More than digital technology, as emphasized in the proposed VBGRAMG, with which women have faced several problems in accessing employment and payments, what they need is a Union Budget with guaranteed and sustained employment across all seasons.

It is therefore hoped that the Act will be reviewed and reimagined on behalf of the poor and the marginalised for the much needed livelihood security and ecological restoration. Bhanumathi Kalluri works with tribal women on their forest rights, livelihood and food security and for gender equality in governance of natural resources.