P. Sainath The NREGA is having multiple and layered effects. With better wages, the bargaining power of the weakest has gone up a notch. Lakshmamma hopes the NREG work will continue. But she's up against a powerful combine of forces entrenched in the countryside and ensconced in Delhi's power elite. "Why can't they keep the schools open during summer,' asks P. Somamma in Mosangi. A strange question, with the mercury blazing past 43 Celsius in the Nalgonda village and all of us cowering in the little shade we can find. "Why would you want to send the kids to school in this heat, Somamma?' "At least there,' she says, "they got one decent meal a day. I can't afford to give them one now, during the vacation.' In Kondapur in Mahbubnagar district, Bharatamma echoes that demand. "When the schools are closed, there is no mid-day meal. That means, instead of getting to eat, the children go to work. How else does the family manage?' Hit by rising food prices, poor families can't afford one more meal. For those with two children in school, the costs really go up. When the schools are open, you can find some young ones saving a part of their meal for a hungry grandparent at home. Back in Mosangi, Somamma's son Bikshapati says he preferred the mid-day meal at school to food at home. "It was better,' he says. "We got dal, rice, tomatoes, rasam, even eggs.' Much of that is beyond his family's reach now. If he and his family are able to pull on at all, it's because of the work the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act brings to their village. In Mosangi, there is bitterness over how it has worked. In Kondapur, where it has done better, there are some complaints. Yet, in the eyes of all them, this is the most important programme the countryside has seen in years. There are complaints of rip-offs. "We've been paid only Rs.30 a day,' says an angry P. Mallamma in Mosangi. The record says they got Rs.84 a day. K. Kalamma says she has "worked for over a month, without being paid.' Even a former deputy sarpanch, Saiddulu, has not been paid for a week's work. He is well over 60