The recently notified Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act has left the door open for the government to withhold critical ground-level data, a private research organisation has pointed out.
Flagging the weak transparency provisions in the VB-G RAM G Act, LibTech India said the Centre might use its discretionary power and choose not to share data on job cards, attendance, projects, funds availability, liability and delayed wage payment, among others.
Under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which the VB-G RAM G Act seeks to replace, the rural development ministry discloses data on key aspects such as approved labour budget for states, work demand pattern, outlays and outcomes, social audit findings and unemployment allowance given to workers in case work is not provided within 15 days of raising the demand.
The VB-G RAM G Act provides for weekly public disclosure systems, including digital and physical disclosure of key metrics, muster rolls, payments, sanctions, inspections and grievances, “as may be specified by the central government”. The law mandates the strengthening of the social audit mechanism and the adoption of technology-enabled systems prescribed by the Centre.
In a statement, the LibTech India said, unlike the MGNREGA, the VB-G RAM G Act gives arbitrary, discretionary power to the Union government over coverage, implementation modalities and disclosures, without assuming any statutory liabilities. It departs from the demand-driven, decentralised principles that were foundational to the MGNREGA.
The new Act has brought down the Centre’s share of expenses to 60 per cent from 90 per cent under the MGNREGA, with the states bearing the remaining 40 per cent of the scheme’s costs. The Centre will have the power to decide the areas where the law will be implemented.
“In the MGNREGA, substantial programme information was proactively placed in the public domain through the management information system (MIS). Despite limitations, the principle of public disclosure remained central. This enabled social audits, independent research, media scrutiny, and corrective action by governments themselves. By repealing MGNREGA, the statutory disclosure architecture enabling public scrutiny is now at risk,” the LibTech India statement said.
“While the new Act contains references to transparency, there is no clarity on the scope, granularity, and enforceability of the data that will be placed in the public domain, or whether it will match the worker-level, demand-side disclosures that existed under MGNREGA,” it added.
Chakradhar Buddha, a researcher at LibTech India, said granular and disaggregated data covering several critical aspects of implementation were placed in the public domain under the MGNREGA, enabling independent audits by civil society organisations, researchers, and the media.
He referred to the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, which exempted the MGNREGA to allow such public disclosure of data.
“If similar exemptions are not provided, it is quite possible that granular data critical for auditing the implementation of the Viksit Bharat–Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission may not be made available, which would be an impediment to transparency and accountability,”
he said.