What was once a lush green forest had been turned into a desert landscape because of deforestation. In Pati , a small block in Badwani district of Madhya Pradesh water is extremely scarce and being a primarily subsistence agricultural community, the variations in annual monsoons has also been making life extremely difficult here for the people. Prior to the the enactment of the MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) in 2005 there was acute seasonal distress migration and even the people who had stayed behind had to live on 15-20 rupees a day as the daily wages given to...