Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi called the government’s new rural-jobs law – that replaces the one named after Mahatma Gandhi – as “anti-state and anti-village by design” and Congress Jairam Ramesh accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of suffering from a “case of acute acronym-itis” on Friday.

The Congress pincer attack came hours after after the Centre rammed through two bills with two with elaborate acronyms, the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Bill and the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Bill.

The Opposition has dubbed both the new laws – SHANTI, which opens up the nuclear power sector to private players, has lax liability clauses in case of accidents, critics say – as dangerous.

Ramesh, Congress’s general secretary in-charge of communications, posted a cartoon on X (formerly Twitter) that mocked the government’s fondness for long, carefully branded scheme names.

The cartoon announced an “All new A.C.R.O.N.Y.M MANTRALAYA — Administrative Commission for Renaming Old Schemes — New Yet Meaningless.”

“The PM is suffering from a case of acute acronym-itis,” Ramesh wrote.

The VB-G RAM G Bill, which seeks to replace the 20-year-old Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), was passed by the Rajya Sabha with a voice vote late on Thursday night, hours after it cleared the Lok Sabha.

Some MPs tore copies of the legislation, prompting House chairman C.P. Radhakrishnan to warn them not to move towards the Treasury benches. Later, several Opposition lawmakers sat on an overnight dharna outside the Samvidhan Sadan in the Parliament complex.

On Friday morning, Rahul Gandhi escalated the attack, declaring that the new law was not a reform but a dismantling of the core promise of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)..

“Last night, the Modi government demolished twenty years of MGNREGA in one day,” Rahul wrote on X on Friday morning.

“It demolishes the rights-based, demand-driven guarantee and turns it into a rationed scheme which is controlled from Delhi. It is anti-state and anti-village by design,” Gandhi said, calling the VB-G RAM G Bill “anti village”.

Rahul said the MGNREGA had fundamentally altered rural power relations by giving workers bargaining power.

“With real options, exploitation and distress migration fell, wages increased, working conditions improved, all while building and reviving rural infrastructure. That leverage is precisely what this government wants to break,” he alleged.

He said that by capping work and introducing more avenues to deny employment the new law weakens “the one instrument the rural poor had”.

“We saw what MGNREGA meant during Covid. When the economy shut down and livelihoods collapsed, it kept crores from falling into hunger and debt,” he said.

He argued that women would be among the worst affected.

“It helped women the most – year after year, with women contributing more than half the person-days,” he said, adding, “When you ration a jobs programme, it is women, Dalits, Adivasis, landless workers and the poorest OBC communities who get pushed out first.”

He said the bill was “bulldozed through Parliament without proper scrutiny” and that the Opposition’s demand to refer the legislation to a standing committee had been rejected.

“A law that rewires the rural social contract, affecting crores of workers, should never be rammed through without serious committee scrutiny, expert consultation, and public hearings,” he said.

“PM Modi's targets are clear: Weaken labour, weaken the leverage of rural India, especially Dalits, OBCs and Adivasis, centralise power, and then sell slogans as reform,” the Congress MP added.

Asserting that MGNREGA was among the most successful poverty alleviation and empowerment programmes in the world, he said, “We will not let this government destroy the rural poor's last line of defence. We will stand with workers, panchayats, and states to defeat this move and build a nationwide front to ensure this law is withdrawn.”

The government has argued that the VB-G RAM G Bill guarantees 125 days of rural wage employment every year and is part of a broader push to streamline welfare delivery.