AFTER forcefully pushing through the Labour Codes, the BJP led Central Government has now targeted the rural working class and introduced the Viksit Bharat - Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (‘VB - G Ram G’) Bill, to snatch away Right to Work. This Bill is going to repeal the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005.

Erasing Rights, Pushing Hindutva

The very nomenclature of this Bill exposes one of its real intents. The BJP-led Central Government has always been hostile to the spirit of MGNREGA even though it cannot deny the scheme’s critical importance for the rural workforce and the rural economy. This contradiction flows from the BJP’s approach to democracy and, in particular, the self-obsessed character of the Modi government. They resent MGNREGA because it was introduced by an earlier elected government, yet they cannot discard it outright due to its proven utility. The regime seeks to project that every positive initiative has originated only under its own rule. Even the name is unacceptable. The legacy of MGNREGA, the long struggles that culminated in its enactment, and the decisive role played by the Left in its formulation are intolerable to the Sangh Parivar. The deliberate attempt to name the proposed legislation to evoke Ram VB- G Ram G (विकसित भारत—जी राम जी) signals the sinister agenda of RSS.

From Demand-Driven to Budget-Controlled Scheme

The compulsion of the BJP Government to project the proposed Bill as superior to MGNREGA does not reflect any genuine concern for massive unemployment, widespread poverty or the deteriorating living conditions of the rural working class. This is evident from the fact that the proposed Bill represents a clear-cut departure from the basic spirit and foundational principles of MGNREGA.

MGNREGA is a demand-driven programme that legally obligates the State to provide employment. The proposed Bill seeks to overturn this principle by converting a statutory right into a discretionary scheme, while simultaneously shifting the financial and administrative burden onto state governments.

The demand-driven character of MGNREGA is rooted in the Central Government’s legal obligation to provide the required funds. Although the Centre has progressively curtailed allocations over the years, the proposed Bill seeks to legitimise this denial. Section 4(5) of the Bill empowers the Central Government to fix a “normative allocation” for states based on objective parameters “prescribed by the Central Government”. So, the Bill empowers the Central Government to arbitrarily determine the amount of funds allocated to each state, which in turn dictates the number of days of employment that can be generated there. In this way it fundamentally reverses the core principle of MGNREGA by shifting from a demand-driven framework, where funds follow demand, to a supply-driven model in which demand is forced to fit within a pre-determined budget. Then, Section 4(6) makes any expenditure beyond this limit the responsibility of state governments.

Curtailing Year-Round Employment

MGNREGA guarantees the work throughout the year to the workers whenever they demand. Section 6 of the Bill, under the pretext of facilitating the adequate availability of agricultural labour during peak agricultural seasons, makes a highly regressive provision. Section 6(2) of the proposed Bill stipulates that no work shall be commenced or executed during the peak agricultural seasons. The power to notify such periods and areas is vested with the states.

This provision is directly against the right of work. With high use of mechanisation, the working days are decreasing in agriculture and work opportunities are falling even in peak season of cultivation and harvesting. MGNREGA has helped to resist the fall in wage rate and became an instrument of collective bargaining to ensure better wages for work in agricultural operations. This clause will give a free hand to landlords and rich peasants to exploit agricultural labourers. It serves the class interests of landlords and capitalist farmers by ensuring the availability of cheap labour during peak seasons. A publicly funded welfare and development programme is thus deliberately suspended to protect private profit interests.

Class Question of Wage Rates

Under Section 10 of the proposed Bill, wage rates will be fixed by the Central government, but it has a major limitation. Section 6(2) of MGNREGA states that wages should be aligned with the minimum wages for agricultural labour as specified under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948. Although MGNREGA wages were delinked in January 2009, shortly after the Left Front withdrew support to the UPA-I government, the Act continues to contain a clear and progressive legal provision. On this basis, workers organisations have consistently demanded that MGNREGA wages be legally linked to minimum wages. Though in most of the states, the present MNREGA wages are below the level of minimum wages for agricultural labour but the present Bill removes this aspect. Furthermore, the Parliamentary Committee in its eighth report presented on May 22, 2025, has recommended raising MGNREGA wages to at least Rs 400 per day, stating that current rates are insufficient to cover basic daily expenses. In a report submitted to Parliament in March this year, the committee called for revising wage rates based on the real impact of inflation on rural households.

Currently, MGNREGA wages are calculated based on the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPI-AL), using 2009 as the base year. The committee strongly criticised this outdated method, calling it irrelevant and incapable of reflecting current inflation and living costs. The Mahendra Dev Committee (2013) had earlier suggested updating the MGNREGA wages to the current (2014) minimum wage rate for unskilled agricultural labourers fixed by the states under the Minimum Wages Act, or the ‘current MGNREGA wage rate’, whichever is higher, and considering CPI (Rural) as an index to protect wages against inflation The Anoop Satpathy Committee also recommended a minimum daily wage of Rs 375. However, the Central government has ignored all such recommendations. The proposed Bill abandons this principle entirely. It does not link wages to any legally binding statute, does not mandate indexation to inflation, and does not even guarantee alignment with the national floor wage. This gives the Centre unchecked power to fix wages at arbitrarily low levels, with no legal obligation to revise them over time. If wages are aligned with inflation, minimum wage standards, and actual cost of living, only then the Employment Guarantee Schemes can it strengthen income security, uphold workers’ rights and enhance their dignity.

Financial Burden on States  

The proposed scheme is explicitly designed as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme, under which state governments will be required to bear 40 per cent of the total financial burden. Under MGNREGA, the Union Government is responsible for 100 per cent labour wages and 75 per cent of the material costs. In practice, this translates to a 90:10 cost share between the Centre and the States. Section 22(2) of the proposed Bill provides that “the fund-sharing pattern between the Central Government and the State Governments shall be 90:10 for the North Eastern States, Himalayan States and Union territory (Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir) and 60:40 for all other States and Union territories with legislature.”

In addition to this, under Section 11, the unemployment allowance shall be payable if work is not provided within fifteen days, and Section 22(8) puts the liability for such allowance on the State Government.

In the post-GST regime, states are already facing acute fiscal stress due to reduced autonomy over taxation and frequent delays in transfers from the Centre. Imposing an additional financial burden will severely weaken the implementation of this scheme and simultaneously constrain states’ capacity to fund other welfare programmes. This will also disproportionately impact poorer and high out-migration states. The increased financial burden may lead to states resorting to registering workers’ demand for work.

Centralising Power, Marginalising Gram Sabhas

One of the defining features of MGNREGA is that the planning of works to be undertaken under the scheme is done through Gram Sabhas based on local needs, in accordance with the 73rd Constitutional Amendment. This has been reversed by shifting the planning process from local to a pre-defined centralised priority system of a ‘National Rural Infrastructure Stack’. Under MGNREGA, Gram Sabhas have the authority to identify and approve works under the scheme. Every person residing in a village has a right to attend the gram sabha and an equal right to participate in its discussions. Now, work will be identified through a top-down approach, with projects required to align with centrally defined priorities such as the Viksit Bharat agenda and the PM Gati Shakti scheme.

The Central government will even decide when and where the Act will be operational. This is an ambiguous clause. Section 5(1) of the proposed Bill says that “the State Government shall, in such rural areas in the State as notified by the Central Government, provide to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work, not less than 125 days of guaranteed employment.” It is unclear that whether a rural area that is not notified by the centre will have the right to work for the people of that area.   

The only hype being created around the Bill is the claim that it increases guaranteed work to 125 days. This appears to be nothing more than rhetoric. Even when work was permitted throughout the year, the average number of workdays in most states remained below 50, with only a minuscule proportion of households completing 100 days of work. Under the present restrictive provisions of the Bill, it appears almost impossible to increase the actual number of working days on the ground.

Technocratic Surveillance and the New Architecture of Exclusion

Through this Bill, with one stroke, the government has legalised and institutionalised all the controversial and exclusionary technical mechanisms in the implementation of the employment guarantee. These include biometric authentication of workers and functionaries, digitisation of transactions, geospatial technology enabled planning, and mobile application- and dashboard-based monitoring systems. Workers organisations has repeatedly highlighted widespread exclusions resulting from the imposition of opaque, arbitrary technologies in MGNREGA like digital attendance (NMMS) and Aadhaar-based payment systems (ABPS).

The process of bringing this Bill is also against the established democratic norms. This Bill is being proposed without any consultation with workers and workers-groups. The Bill represents a fundamental shift from a rights-based law that provides an enforceable entitlement into a budget-constrained scheme without any accountability of the Union Government. The rural rich and landlords have always taken a stance against MGNREGA, and the BJP-led NDA is showing its class character by coming up with this Bill.

Agricultural workers, rural labourers, and the rural poor will not accept this rollback of their democratic and economic rights. They will resist this anti-worker, pro-landlord and pro-corporate legislation through united struggles on the streets, defending MGNREGA and the constitutional principle of the State’s responsibility towards the working class.