Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday accused the Modi government of demolishing 20 years of MGNREGA in a single day, and dubbed the new VB-G RAM G legislation as “anti village”.
Noting that the VB-G RAM G Bill is not a “revamp” of MGNREGA, Gandhi said in a post on X, “Last night, the Modi government demolished twenty years of MGNREGA in one day.
“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.” The Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha also said that MGNREGA gave the rural worker 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,” Gandhi alleged.
He said by capping work and creating more ways to deny it, the VB-G RAM G Bill 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,” Gandhi claimed.
It helped women the most – year after year, with women contributing more than half the person-days, the Congress leader said.
“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.
“To top it all, this law was bulldozed through Parliament without proper scrutiny. The opposition’s demand to send the Bill to a standing committee was 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.
“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,” Gandhi said.
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will stand with workers, panchayats, and states to defeat this move and build a nationwide front to ensure this law is withdrawn.” Parliament on Thursday night passed the VB-G RAM G Bill that seeks to replace the 20-year-old MGNREGA and guarantees 125 days of rural wage employment every year amid vociferous protests by the opposition.
The Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Bill was passed by the Rajya Sabha with a voice vote late on Thursday night, hours after the Lok Sabha cleared it, amid strong protests by the opposition over the removal of Mahatma Gandhi’s name from the existing rural employment guarantee scheme and accusing the government of putting the financial burden on states.