Twenty years ago, India enacted the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which guaranteed 100 days of manual employment to India’s rural poor. The scheme, introduced by the then Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in 2005, was hailed by international economists as a landmark poverty alleviation program, granting a legal right to employment and annually impacting the lives of 126 million people.

Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government virtually rang the death knell of the scheme, recasting it as Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act 2025 (G-RAM-G Act), or in other words, Developed India-Guarantee for Employment and Livelihood Mission (Rural) Act.

Unlike the rights-based approach of the UPA era, MGNREGA, which ensured a citizen’s right to work by guaranteeing him basic employment, the Modi government’s G-RAM-G whittles it down to a discretionary scheme.

“It allows the federal government to decide where and when the scheme applies,” development economist Jean Dreze told the BBC.

The MGNREGA was one of the five laws brought in by the UPA during its decade in power (2004-2014), These laws guaranteed citizens’ legal rights to free and compulsory education (RTE), to information (RTI), to food (National Food Security Act), the Forest Dwellers Act, and to employment with the MGNREGA. The enactment of these laws was a huge achievement, especially since they made the rights legally enforceable and the denial of which could be prosecuted in a court of law.

In the 11 years since the BJP came to power in 2014, the Modi government has gradually weakened and practically made redundant all these rights, including that of MGNREGA.

In 2015, Modi had trashed the MGNREGA scheme. However, he retained the scheme due to the tremendous rural demand for it. For the jobless in India’s villages, the scheme provided a means of livelihood – either through wage payments from work provided by the state or........

© The Diplomat