Kamala Devi, a 45-year-old widow from Badnor village in Rajasthan, fears for her future.
Since the death of her husband in 2005, her family’s survival has depended on work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which provides a legal guarantee of 100 days of unskilled work to households every year.
The NREGA, Kamala said, enabled her to raise her daughter and marry her off. “I earn around ₹2,000 a month from MGNREGA work. If it is discontinued or weakened, women like me will suffer immensely,” she said.
Kamala was speaking at a media conference organised on Wednesday by civil society groups under the Joint Platform of Rural and Agricultural Workers, coinciding with the Lok Sabha’s discussion on the VIKSIT BHARAT—GUARANTEE FOR ROZGAR AND AJEEVIKA MISSION (GRAMIN): VB-G RAM G BILL 2025.
The bill seeks to replace the MGNREGA’s demand-driven, rights-based framework with what critics describe as a discretionary Union government scheme. While the MGNREGA guarantees employment as a legal right, the new bill empowers the Centre to determine allocations to states, decide where the programme will be implemented, and roll it out on a graded scale based on a gram panchayat’s proximity to urban areas.
Section 5(1) of the bill says that the state government shall provide jobs to households in such rural areas in the state as may be notified by the Centre. The MGNREGA, however, is implemented uniformly across all panchayats in the country. Section 4(4) of the bill provides for categorisation of panchayats based on development parameters, including proximity to urban areas, for work under the scheme. The NREGA does not categorise panchayats.
Under the existing arrangement, the Centre pays the entire wage cost and 75 per cent of material expenses. The VB-G RAM G Bill proposes that states shoulder 40 per cent of the total cost, a move that economists and activists argue will discourage poorer states from implementing the programme.
Civil society groups and independent economists decried the VB-G RAM G Bill as an attempt to weaken the people by eliminating their right to jobs. They called it a government patronage scheme and warned about the increased partisan approach in the disbursement of funds for states ruled by
Opposition parties under the new legislation.
Jayati Ghosh, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said the bill was a “gift” from the Centre to replace the rights of the people. “It is an attack on the federal structure too because of centralisation of decisions. The Centre will decide which areas the scheme will be implemented in and where it won’t be. The scheme will intensify extreme partisan centralisation,” Ghosh said.
Some Opposition-ruled states like Bengal have complained of step-motherly
attitude as the rural development ministry has discontinued funds to the state under the MGNREGA, citing
irregularities.
Economist Prabhat Patnaik, retired faculty member at Jawaharlal Nehru University, said the NREGA was passed in Parliament in 2005 with the unanimous support of all political parties. The UPA government had consulted civil society groups and citizen forums that have been demanding this law.
“Without any consultation, the government has brought this bill to undo the legal guarantee to work. It is reprehensible as people’s rights are being taken away,” Patnaik said.
Economist Jean Dreze said the “switch-off” clause in the bill, allowing the Centre to disallow work in certain areas, could be misused over political disagreements. He said the states were interested in implementing the MGNREGA because the Centre was bearing the entire wage cost and over 90 per cent of the total cost.
“Now the states’ share has increased from less than 10 per cent to 40 per cent. If any state spends more than the amount decided by the Centre, that state will have to bear the extra amount fully. These provisions will discourage states from implementing the job programme,” Dreze said.
Annie Raja from the National Federation of Indian Women said civil society groups and women’s organisations had decided to start agitation campaigns from Friday against the bill. “We will protest across the country to demand the withdrawal of this bill,” Raja said.
The chairperson of the standing committee on rural development, Saptagiri Ulaka, on Wednesday wrote a letter to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, urging him to send the bill to the standing committee for a thorough examination. He wrote that the bill would adversely impact the interests of SCs and STs, who constitute 35 per cent of workers under the MGNREGA.
Mukesh from the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, a Rajasthan-based organisation working for MGNREGA workers’ rights, criticised the provision in the VB-G RAM G Bill that has increased the working hours from 8 to 12 a day. The bill says “working hours of an adult worker may be flexible but shall not extend beyond 12 hours in a day, including intervals for rest”.