ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the vital role of civil society, and shows that it is a force of and for innovation. In the fields of wages, information and communication technologies, food security, work tools and provisions for women workers, the ideas and interventions of civil society have laid the foundations for today's achievements of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). This chapter presents selected ideas and practices from activists who made the effort to redirect their thinking and to overcome the gap. The inspiration to demand a rural employment guarantee on a national level had come from the neighbouring state of Maharashtra where such a guarantee the Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Act (MEGA) had been enacted in 1977. The policy had been developed by a Gandhian, V. S. Page, to address rising distress in the rural areas. The Maharashtra law guaranteed employment to all rural people for an unlimited number of days.
