Prof Bhaskar examines the repeal of MGNREGA for VB-GRAMG, exposing the risks this “terminological revolution” poses to rural workers, for Different Truths.
The terminological revolution has once again come to the working people – people who work in the field in India’s villages hardly feel concerned about this revolution. Particularly when this revolution is ‘top down’ or state-led. Working people in India’s villages also hardly understand ‘top down’ other than expressing ‘mei bhi insaan hun’ (I am also a human being). Rather than beating around the bush, let me pen what has come again for the working people to accept.
This time it is not merely a name change – for a rose remains a rose, whatever new names are used to show a rose – ‘phalena parichiyate briksha’ (a tree is known by its fruits or outcome). Since the past two decades seems a long period to tolerate the old name National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NAREGA) that was passed in the Parliament of India in 2005, later known as MNREGA (M standing for Mahatma Gandhi), the core state decided to repeal the 2005 Act and formulate a new name, of course, borrowing ideas from the old one with some cosmetic changes. However, some latent hurdles may be there in cosmetic changes, even – changes are hardly readily understood.
New replacing old
The Government of India planned a major change to the two-decade-old MGNREGA through a new bill in the Parliament – it is through the Parliament because the 2005 Act was passed in the Parliament of India. The proposed legislation is termed the Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-GRAMG) Bill, 2025, which aims to repeal the MGNREG Act, 2005. As mentioned in print media, the proposed bill provides a guarantee of employment for 125 days – higher than MGNREGA’s 100 days; unlike MGNREGA, where the centre pays the wages, the states will have to share the burden under the new avatar. The new Avtar proposes a ‘pause’ in employment guarantee during the peak agricultural season to ensure adequate availability of agricultural labour.
Implications
Beginning with the third point, the agricultural labourers will have a narrower scope to avail themselves of 125 days of employment. The ‘pause’ clause is suspicious because of the assumption of an ‘unlimited supply of labour’ at the national scale – it may be that some selected landlords of some more advanced regions may not readily get cheap migrant labourers to work in their farms.
The point is not about personal charisma – why erase Mahatma Gandhi from the NREGA? Because in the beginning, also when the Act was passed in the Parliament, MG was not there – it was NREGA. MG was invented later in some enthusiastic circle – elitism in policy often displays diplomacy by terminology.
It seems the whole text of the 2005 Act was not carefully studied by the changemakers. The 100 days of work per household was the minimum number of working days guaranteed – it was not the maximum. Thus, raising it to 125 days does not carry much operational significance – even with the old Act, the target and achievement could have been raised to 125 or more per household.
One basic purpose, though not spelt out directly, was to stop or reduce migration from villages under distress. For unnumbered reasons, including the long-term indebtedness of households in rural India, migration under distress could not be stopped. And most of the households could not wait for more than a fortnight for the ‘work’ to come to get engaged. And creating ‘work’ was not the responsibility of the workers at the rural bottom – it was the institutional responsibility of the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs).
Rural Schemes Before 2005
There was no dearth of programmes and schemes for the rural economy of India, particularly since the 1970s. To mention some of these, the Rural Works Programme launched in 1970-71 that in 1973 came to be known as the Drought Prone Areas Programme (DPAP), the Crash Scheme for Rural Employment (CSRE), the National Rural Employment Programme (1980), the Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme (RLEGP) (1983), the Jawahar Rojgar Yojana (JRY) (1989), the Food for Work Programme (1977-1978), the Sampoorna Grameen Rojgar Yojana (SGRY) (2001) and many others. All had common objectives like employment through asset creation and employment within the rural economy of India. By that time, it was crystal clear that rural workers could not be rehabilitated to regular jobs in the organised sector.
Some Facts Since 2005
Based on a primary survey that I conducted in six major states of India, namely, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Maharashtra, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh, selecting three districts from each state, sponsored by the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, it was evident that the guarantee of minimum 100-day employment per household remained unfulfilled, in some locations children were also seen working as proxies for their ailing adult members in the family, some workers were anxious to get wages equivalent to the number of days they worked, and nobody got unemployment allowance. One major drawback was the absence of leadership in PRIs to plan work rather than waiting for work to come to their doors. The Act of 2005 was need-based and demand-based, where workers were often hesitant to demand work.
Some Comments
Let there be no doubt that since its birth, NREGA has become the largest administered labour market that also worked as a shield to prevent downward flexibility in the money wage rate. Once the rural wage rate through NREGA was decided administratively with state-wise minor variations, the rest of the labour market outside the organised industrial sector could realise the barometer of the wage-labour market. NREGA was a pro-labour step by the then Government of India that also transformed the village economy through the creation of productive assets and livelihoods.
Unfortunate is when the economists see NREGA wages as a burden on the economy, knowing fully well that wages are not only paid but also received as labour compensation that constitutes the income of the labourers, the income that comes quickly to market for basic goods and that oils the wheel of the economy. It is, of course, different if labour is substituted by capital – machine capital – that seems not the purpose of rural job creation. And it is a different viewpoint to show wages as a cost that raises the cost of production or reduces profitability from the viewpoint of the controllers of capital and technology.
The special provision called ‘pause’ for availability of labour for landlords during peak agricultural season also implies the hand-in-glove relationship between the capital controllers and the state-controller – that growth has to be ensured even if it is unequal. Meanwhile, the World Inequality Report 2026 showed extremely high wealth inequality in India, where 1.0 per cent of the population owns 65.0 per cent of total wealth. Economists need to spell out their ‘economics and ethics’ in the processes of growth.
I do not find any reason why the state, as the law-controller, found it appropriate to repeal the 2005 NREGA Act, even with the flaws in its implementation, like non-receiving unemployment allowance that is there in the Act and delayed payment of wages and secret wage cuts and all that. If it were only a decision in polity to erase from the memory of people the existence and functioning of NREGA, the ruling political authority needs a second thought.
Instead of repealing NREGA, the Government of India could have chalked out a parallel programme like the National Urban Employment Guarantee and passed it as an act through the Parliament. I stand against the repeal of the NREGA Act, 2005. Repealing NREGA, 2005, is not only unwarranted but probably misconceived. Let good sense come back.
Picture design by Anumita Roy
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