Congress Announces Launch of Nationwide Stir on Jan. 5 against Scrapping of the MGNREGA
Sukla Sen
Radical Socialist Statement on the Repeal of MGNREGA
On Thursday, December 18, 2025, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was repealed and replaced with the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) — the VB-G RAM G Bill, 2025. The Modi government, through deliberate and calculated dissimulation, tabled the bill for discussion in Parliament without any prior consultation, allocated inadequate time for debate and finally passed the bill through a voice vote despite widespread dissent from opposition parties. The removal of Gandhi’s name from the Act is calculated to offend many outside the Hindutva fold and is particularly aimed at the Congress Party. But it also serves to divert attention publicly from the substantive changes made. By increasing the guaranteed number of workdays per household from 100 to 125 days the government can pretend that this is a reform to strengthen MGNREGA. However, please note that this new ceiling is not at all binding and because this scheme, unlike the previous one, is not demand driven from below, its application or otherwise—where, when, to what extent or not at all---is at the behest of the powers above.
MGNREGA provided individuals with a legally enforceable right to work. Those in rural India who were willing and able to work could demand employment and were entitled to be provided with work and wages by the central government. There is a substantial body of evidence suggesting that the implementation of MGNREGA, led to increases in household earnings in rural India and contributed significantly to the decline in rural poverty. All of this is now set to be reversed.
As mentioned above the VB-G RAM G Bill arrogates power to the central government—constituting a further blow to the federal character of India—to decide allocations to states (“in such rural areas in the state as may be notified by the Central Government”) and to determine where and how much employment generation is warranted. In other words, this is no longer a right to work that rural workers in distress can demand; instead, the central government, in its munificence, will judge—based on so-called “objective parameters”—where employment is to be generated and who will receive it. Targeted programmes are inherently fraught with difficulties in identifying which areas are most in need of resources. A demand-based programme is superior because those in need of employment will themselves ask for it, and the law guarantees them that right, without requiring any “objective parameters” to determine who is worthy of support. This shift provides the basis for further political exclusion by the NDA government in deciding which states and regions will gain or lose access to rural employment guarantees that thus actually are not really guarantees.
While discretionary power over allocation rests with the central government, barring the Northeastern states, HP, Uttarakhand and the two UTs of J&K and Delhi which will contribute 10 per cent, 40 per cent of the financial burden is to be borne by the rest of the states, in contrast to the fully funded nature of MGNREGA. With states already cash-strapped, this additional financial burden will force them to gradually wind down rural employment programmes.
Citing concerns over rising wages, the bill allows states to suspend the provision of rural employment for 60 days during peak sowing and harvesting seasons. The very purpose of a rural employment guarantee is to ensure better wages and livelihoods for people in dire need of work and income. The presence of a rural employment programme creates a reservation wage even for those employed elsewhere, thereby strengthening the bargaining power of workers more generally. The provision to suspend rural employment during peak agricultural seasons is clearly designed to benefit capitalist farmers, big or small, by enabling the continuation of unabated exploitation during sowing and harvesting.
The Narendra Modi government has displayed hostility towards MGNREGA since coming to power in 2014. However, dismantling it outright was difficult, given the benefits it provided to crores of people across rural India and the widespread support it enjoyed among opposition parties. Through sustained bureaucratic chicanery, the government has steadily eroded MGNREGA: there has been large-scale deletion of workers from payment rolls, persistent delays in wage payments, and other administrative obstructions. For instance, in West Bengal, the central government halted the implementation of MGNREGA for more than three years. As reported in The New Indian Express, “[a]cross the country, pending dues under MGNREGS total Rs 9,746.39 crore, including Rs 1,340.07 crore in wages, Rs 7,863.37 crore in material payments and Rs 542.95 crore in administrative costs, against a total allocation of Rs 86,000 crore for 2025–26.”
On the one hand, the current government has curtailed democratic space wherever and however possible: corporate media has become completely subservient to the ruling party, the independence of the judiciary has steadily declined, and the Election Commission is now widely seen as acting at the behest of the BJP. On the other hand, every effort has been made to facilitate increased exploitation by capitalists. In the agrarian sector, the Farm Bills proposed in 2020 were designed to enable the entry of big capital into agriculture, to the detriment not only of agrarian workers but also of medium-sized landowners and small capitalist farmers. These were halted only due to the sustained farmers’ protests. The labour codes that have since been implemented are structured in a way that makes forming unions increasingly difficult, and renders strikes by existing trade unions nearly impossible. Delivering a death blow to MGNREGA is entirely consistent with the pro-capitalist and anti-worker policies of the BJP-led NDA government. This will further intensify rural distress, depress wages, weaken workers’ bargaining power, and expose them to even greater exploitation.
Radical Socialist demands the immediate reinstatement of MGNREGA, with enhanced provisions to ensure its full and proper implementation and as a prelude to eventually extending such a right to work for all unemployed anywhere urban and rural. As things stand today, rural wages have stagnated since the mid-2010s and declined sharply in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 lockdowns. The average national rural wage rate remains below Rs. 300 per day, with wide variations across states. Nearly 60 per cent of the rural workforce is engaged in the agrarian sector, and an increasingly large proportion depends on wage labour for survival. In Uttar Pradesh alone, more than 48 lakh families have benefited from MGNREGA employment. Nationally, over 50 per cent of MGNREGA beneficiaries have been women. The repeal of MGNREGA will bring untold misery to the lives of crores of people in rural India. We call for a united mobilisation of left parties of all shades, trade unions, and democratic and civil rights organisations to protest the repeal of MGNREGA.
[21 12 2025]
