Study of an activity tracking device for rural workers through collaborative design

Majority of the rural population in India rely on agriculture as their major source of income. Due to the unforeseen circumstances and changes pertinent to season, demographics, geopolitical, etc., growth in the agricultural sector has been very constrained, thus keeping the majority below the poverty line. Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act or MGNREGA, is an Indian labor law that strives to guarantee the ‘right to work. It is a social security measure with a goal to improve livelihood of the adults in the rural areas by providing at least 100 days of unskilled labor work. However, its efficiency is hampered by the inability to accurately track the work on a regular basis. Absence of third-party contractors may be financially beneficial, but it is causing a growing discontentment within the rural households. This paper summarizes two years of rigorous field work and articulates field experience and challenges with the MGNREGA scheme implementation in Dunda village, located in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand, India. The systemic and contextual causes are explored while our stay with the rural community and studied using participatory and user centric methods. This paper presents and proposes a viable solution developed using collaborative approach with the rural workers and village officials in-charge of the scheme's implementation. A wearable smart device to monitor the on-field activity of workers is proposed. A centralized worker report database to record workdays generated by each worker and task details is also proposed. Further, details about task progress and worker compensation can be regulated. It is expected that this sort of activity tracking device will improve the transparency of the process and restore confidence in the MGNREGA scheme at the grassroots.