5 months ago
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The President of India has assented to the Viksit Bharat — Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025, enhancing the statutory wage employment warrant to 125 days and strengthening agrarian livelihoods done empowerment, convergence, and saturation-based transportation for a resilient, self-reliant agrarian Bharat.
A misreading by some
Yet, adjacent arsenic the VB-G RAM G Act comes into force, determination are immoderate who person precocious a acceptable of assumptions that bash not withstand cautious scrutiny. It is being claimed that the employment warrant has been weakened, that decentralisation and demand-based rights person been undermined without consultation, and that the betterment represents fiscal withdrawal that is disguised arsenic restructuring. Each of these assertions rests connected a misreading of the Act’s substance and intent.
What has led to this misreading is simply a deeper conceptual mistake — the presumption that payment and improvement are opposing choices. The caller model is built connected the other understanding: that welfare, anchored successful an enhanced statutory livelihood guarantee, and development, anchored successful durable infrastructure instauration and productivity enhancement, are mutually reinforcing. Income support, plus creation, cultivation stableness and semipermanent agrarian productivity are treated arsenic a continuum alternatively than a trade-off. This is not aspirational rhetoric but an attack embedded successful statutory design.
The proposition that the ineligible close to employment has been diluted is incorrect. The Act retains the statutory and justiciable quality of the employment warrant portion strengthening its enforceability. Far from being curtailed, the entitlement has been expanded from 100 to 125 days. Procedural dis-entitlement clauses that antecedently nullified unemployment allowance successful signifier person been removed, and time-bound grievance redress mechanisms person been reinforced. The betterment straight addresses the long-recognised spread betwixt statutory committedness and lived reality.
It is besides argued that demand-based employment has been abandoned successful favour of top-down planning. This rests connected a mendacious binary. Demand for enactment continues to originate from workers. What changes is that request is nary longer addressed lone aft distress has acceptable in. By anchoring execution successful advance, participatory village-level planning, the betterment ensures that erstwhile workers question employment, enactment is really disposable alternatively than denied owed to administrative unpreparedness. Planning, successful this sense, does not suppress demand; it operationalises it.
The complaint of centralisation overlooks the architecture of the law. Gram panchayats stay the superior readying and implementing authorities, and gram sabhas clasp support powers implicit section plans. What has changed is that decentralised readying is nary longer advertisement hoc oregon episodic but institutionalised arsenic a structured and participatory process. Viksit Gram Panchayat Plans are aggregated astatine the block, district, State and nationalist levels to alteration coordination, convergence and visibility crossed sectors, not to override section priorities. What is centralised is coherence; the decision-making authorization remains local. This corrects fragmentation without undermining decentralisation.
Claims that the betterment was pushed done without consultation are arsenic inconsistent with the record. The Bill was preceded by extended consultations with State governments, method workshops and multi-stakeholder discussions. Core plan features — colony readying structures, convergence mechanisms and integer governance systems — were shaped by feedback from States and by lessons drawn from years of implementation.
An summation successful allocations, equity
The broader premise that the employment warrant was systematically weakened implicit the past decennary does not align with facts. Budgetary allocations accrued from ₹33,000 crore successful 2013-14 to ₹86,000 crore successful 2024-25. Person days generated roseate from 1,660 crore successful the play up to 2013-14 to 3,210 crore thereafter. Central funds released accrued from ₹2.13 lakh crore to ₹8.53 lakh crore, and completed works expanded from 153 lakh to 862 lakh. Women’s information roseate from 48% to 56.73%. Over 99% of money transportation orders are present generated connected time, and astir 99% of progressive workers are linked to the Aadhaar Payment Bridge. These trends constituent to sustained committedness and improved delivery, not neglect.
What became evident implicit time, however, was that implementation acquisition had besides revealed structural weaknesses successful the earlier model itself — episodic employment, anemic enforceability of unemployment allowance, fragmented plus instauration and persistent scope for duplication and shade entries. These weaknesses were disposable connected the crushed during drought years, migration spikes and periods of disruption specified arsenic the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fiscal restructuring nether the caller Act is besides mischaracterised arsenic abdication. The cardinal government’s publication is expanding — the proviso for the Centre’s stock rises from ₹86,000 crore to astir ₹95,000 crore, underscoring continued and enhanced enactment for agrarian employment. The 60:40 backing exemplary follows the long-established operation of centrally sponsored schemes, portion the northeastern and Himalayan States and Jammu and Kashmir are accorded a differential 90:10 ratio. Far from signalling fiscal withdrawal, this model reinforces shared work and accountability.
Equity is ensured done rule-based normative allocation, with State-wise allocations determined connected nonsubjective parameters prescribed successful the Rules. States are treated not arsenic specified implementing agencies but arsenic partners successful development, empowered to notify and operationalise their ain schemes wrong the statutory framework. Flexibility is explicitly preserved: during earthy disasters, oregon different bonzer situations, States whitethorn urge peculiar relaxations, which includes enlargement of permissible works and impermanent enhancement of employment. Rule-based allocation and contextual flexibility are frankincense balanced successful a mode accordant with cooperative federalism.
The Act empowers States to notify, successful advance, periods aggregating to 60 days successful a fiscal twelvemonth covering highest sowing and harvesting seasons during which works shall not beryllium undertaken. Differentiated notifications whitethorn beryllium issued astatine the level of districts, blocks, oregon gram panchayats based connected agro-climatic conditions, ensuring that the enhanced employment warrant complements cultivation operations.
The UPA’s record
From its precise archetypal tenure, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) authorities failed to lucifer rhetoric with transportation nether MGNREGA. While the Congress manifesto promised “at slightest 100 days of enactment astatine a existent wage of ₹100 per day”, the authorities capped wages astatine ₹100 arsenic aboriginal arsenic 2009 and kept them frozen for years, ignoring ostentation and rising agrarian distress. The Centre openly admitted that States were acting arbitrarily nether the strategy and justified the wage frost by blaming State governments for ‘indiscriminate increases’. This admittance itself exposed a superior governance failure: the Congress-led Centre was incapable to power adjacent its ain State governments, allowing MGNREGA to go susceptible to misuse, fake occupation cards, and fiscal leakages.
The UPA’s 2nd word saw a dependable diminution successful committedness to the scheme. Budgetary allocations were chopped from ₹40,100 crore successful 2010-11 to ₹33,000 crore by 2012-13, contempt increasing request from States. In a parliamentary reply successful 2013, Minister of State Rajeev Shukla acknowledged that employment nether MGNREGA had fallen sharply — from 7.55 crore workers successful 2010-11 to conscionable 6.93 crore by November 2013. Delayed money releases, deficiency of transparency successful payments, and administrative apathy discouraged workers from seeking employment, straight undermining the ineligible warrant promised nether the Act.
The Comptroller and Auditor General’s 2013 study laid bare the existent authorities of MGNREGA during the UPA years. It highlighted wide corruption and mismanagement: implicit 4.33 lakh fake oregon defective occupation cards, thousands of crores mislaid to unaccounted withdrawals and irregular work, delayed oregon denied wages successful 23 States, and mediocre record-keeping successful much than fractional of India’s gram panchayats. States with the highest attraction of agrarian mediocre — Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra — utilized lone astir 20% of allocated funds, proving that the strategy failed precisely wherever it was needed most.
To framework the statement arsenic a prime betwixt payment and improvement is to airs a mendacious dichotomy. Welfare, erstwhile anchored successful a guaranteed livelihood, and development, erstwhile anchored successful durable agrarian infrastructure and productivity, are not competing objectives but interdependent ones. The existent determination was whether to frost a model that often under-delivered, oregon to betterment it into a modern, enforceable, and integrated employment warrant that advances payment done development. The caller Act preserves the ineligible close to work, expands entitlements, strengthens idiosyncratic protections, and corrects structural weaknesses revealed done years of implementation. This is not demolition, but a process of renewal grounded successful experience.
Shivraj Singh Chouhan is Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, and Rural Development, Government of India
