An awakening week of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) was observed in Gram Panchayat Tanga. This village had high rate of migration and during the awakening week the villagers were told not to migrate to other places as they would get work in the village itself under the NREGS. The villagers kept on waiting, but work was not coming through.
During this period, Regional Officer of PACS Programme, Basant Kumar, visited the village. To mark his visit a gram sabha was organised. During discussion came forth the grim fact that a few families in the village did not have even 1 kg grains and they were eating lathara rotis made of wild grass! The meeting also took decision as to what kind of works need to be initiated in the village.
The entire proceedings were documented and a memorandum was handed over to the District Magistrate. But the district administration preferred to sleep over the memorandum.
After some time, Regional Officer (Communication) of PACS Programme, Sushmita Malaviya, visited the village. She was apprised of the action that was done so far. She wrote a news item and got the same published in the English daily the Hindustan Times. Now the administration woke up from slumber. The District Magistrate constituted a committee, which visited the village in the leadership of the Chief Executive Officer of Zilla Panchayat. The committee immediately handed over 50 kg food grains each to each of the eight families which did not have food grains with them. The committee also sanctioned works worth Rs 40 lakh to be undertaken by the Gram Panchayat.
This joint effort of community groups, organisation and PACS team solved some of the problems of the village.