By Right To Food Campaign
The Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB–GRAM G) Bill, 2025 marks a significant rollback of hard-won statutory guarantees for workers’ rights. The Right to Food Campaign condemns the repealing of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) through this new Act which undermines the right to work of people and all principles of decentralisation, community participation and federalism.
This Bill does not reform employment guarantee; it destroys it.
By repealing the MGNREGA, the government has converted a demand-based legal right to work into a centralised, discretionary, budget-capped scheme, fully controlled by the Union Government. Employment is no longer guaranteed by law but subject to annual allocations, political priorities, and fiscal arbitrariness. This is a betrayal of rural workers, especially women, landless households, Dalits, Adivasis, and migrants who depend on MGNREGA for survival and dignity.
The government’s claim that this new legislation signifies an improvement as it provides 125 days of employment in place of 100 is just an illusion. Under the MGNREGA, on average only about 50 days of work per household has been provided per household – with the entitlements being undermined through delayed payments, low wages, digital exclusions and so on. The VB–GRAM G makes it worse by including state-wise “normative allocations” imposed by the Centre. Any expenditure above these allocations are to be borne entirely by
the state government. With such restrictions, the amount of work provided will only decrease further.
The fiscal burden on state governments will in any case increase with the shift to a 60:40 cost-sharing ratio for wages, which is a shift from the MGNREGA which obliges the Centre to fund the entire wage bill and 75% if the material costs. This changed cost-sharing norms increases the burden on the already fiscally starved state governments and would disproportionately harm poorer states where the capacity to spend is low.
The proposed 60-day blackout period during peak agricultural seasons could further weaken the bargaining power of women and marginalised workers.
The Bill systematically erodes all principles of decentralisation by shifting most decision making powers to the central government. Aligning demand-based rural works schemes with centrally driven schemes like the PM Gati Shakti and National Rural Infrastructure Stack undermines local decision making by the Gram Sabhas and Gram Panchayats. Plan. Increased technocratic control through biometric authentication and digital surveillance ignores overwhelming evidence of exclusions caused by Aadhaar-based payments and digital attendance systems. Corruption will not be eliminated through technology imposed from above, but through transparent, community-led social audits, which this Bill sidelines.
The MGNREGA has been systematically undermined over the last decade through various administrative interventions. A number of reforms were needed towards strengthening the MGNREGA and enabling it to take us towards a true right to work, however the VB-GRAM G by rolling back the MGNREGA is taking us even further away from this ideal. What was required was strengthening the MGNREGA by increasing the wage rate, withdrawing mandatory digital attendance and aadhaar-linked payments, strengthening social audits, empowering local communities and so on. Instead, what we have now is the VB-GRAM G which represents a rollback of hard-won workers’ rights, centralises authority, and leaves the most vulnerable behind.
Right to Food Campaign stands with the NREGA Sangharsh Morcha, trade unions, agricultural workers unions, women’s organisations, and people’s movements across the country in their struggle for the Right to Work.
The VB- GRAM G Bill which repeals MGNREGA and affects millions of workers, was brought to Parliament in total secrecy. In flagrant violation of basic democratic norms & provisions of the Pre-Legislative Consultation Policy, the government did not make public the proposed legislation and did not hold any public consultations. Further, the tearing hurry with which the bill was railroaded through Parliament prevented any meaningful deliberation and parliamentary scrutiny. A legislation with such grave consequences for the rights of people should have been referred to a parliamentary committee for examination.
We call upon the Hon’ble President of India to withhold assent to this regressive legislation. Instead, MGNREGA must be strengthened as a universal, rights-based, and fully funded employment guarantee law. Any attempt to repeal or dismantle MGNREGA without the consent and participation of workers will be met with united, sustained, and nationwide resistance.
MGNREGA was won by the people — and the people will defend it. Steering Committee of Right to Food Campaign
20 December 2025
Source: countercurrents.org