For almost two decades, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) defined much of the framework for rural development in India. On December 18, without any pre-legislative public consultation, or examination by parliamentary committees, it was repealed and replaced with the Viksit Bharat G Ram G Act providing what the government claims is “an enhanced employment guarantee of 125 days”. Huge concerns are being raised, not just about the manner in which the ruling party used its majority in both houses of Parliament to repeal and pass the new legislation, but also about the claims that are being made.
Since the opportunity for a meaningful discussion on the Bill before its passage was brushed aside, it is necessary to seriously engage with the clarifications and response of the rural development minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan in this newspaper on December 20 (‘New job law is not a retreat from social protection. It aims to reform’).
A careful reading of the minister’s article and an analysis of his assertions are necessary. The minister says, “The most prominent feature of the Bill is that it gives a legal guarantee of 125 days of wage employment in a year to each rural household.” If this enhanced legal guarantee of 125 days were seen to be a reality, there would not be the kind of uproar we see across the spectrum of those engaged with this law. It would have been widely welcomed.
The minister takes up the contentious claim of getting 125 days of work on demand under the law. He says, “The most common criticism is that VB-G RAM G undermines the demand-driven nature of rural employment. This claim does not withstand a plain reading of the Bill. Clause 5(1) places a clear statutory obligation on the government to provide not less than 125 days of guaranteed wage employment in every financial year to any rural household whose adult members volunteer to undertake unskilled manual work.”
Let’s do a “plain reading” of the whole of Section 5(1), which leaves out important parts of the text.
It is useful to quote the entire section and compare it with what the minister has claimed. It says: “Save as otherwise provided, the State Government shall, in such rural area in the State as may be notified by the Central Government, provide to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work, not less than one hundred and twenty-five days of guaranteed employment in a financial year in accordance with the Scheme made under this Act.” — emphasis added. It is interesting that the minister deliberately leaves out these qualifying provisions. The law empowers the central government to decide in which areas of the country the scheme will be operationalised, which brings to an end the universal rights MGNREGA gave. Today, nobody knows whether they will be in a “notified” area.
This itself is enough to set off alarm bells across rural India. But there is more in the law that makes it clear that its demand-based architecture has been demolished. Section 4(5), which the minister fails to mention at all, ends the demand-driven law that MGNREGA was, converting it into a supply-constrained scheme, fundamentally undermining the entitlement even in “notified areas” where the scheme may run.
Section 4(5) states that the central government will be able to allocate particular amounts to particular states based on a “normative allocation”. As per the Section “2 (K) ‘normative allocation’ means the allocation of the funds made by the central government to the state”. The central government creates the norm for its own allocations.
The minister celebrates the new Centre-state mandatory fund sharing architecture by saying “the framework treats states not as mere implementing agencies but as partners in development.” Interestingly, the states don’t seem to be rejoicing in this shift. States are speaking out loud and clear, particularly those that are not under the BJP party whip. But even BJP-ruled states are scratching their heads to see how this entirely unprecedented framework would allow them to chart their own course of development. All states are cash starved and MGNREGA provided states with enormous resources for meeting both the employment and development needs of their rural areas. The Bill not only seeks to draw the state government into its rhetoric of providing employment, but also into its real burden of funding its version of “Viksit Bharat”. Resistance from states, and the uproar over mandatory sharing of costs in a 60-40 ratio is bound to grow — and it is quite likely that VB-GRAMG will turn out to be a fairly unworkable scheme, as the Centre and states battle it out over finding the resources for the timely provisioning of the scheme.
Another deliberate change that the government has brought about is to ban works during peak agricultural seasons. The minister says “Concerns regarding agricultural labour shortages during peak seasons are explicitly addressed. Clause 6 empowers state governments to notify, in advance, periods aggregating to 60 days in a financial year covering peak sowing and harvesting seasons during which works under the Bill shall not be undertaken. This built-in flexibility ensures that the enhanced employment guarantee complements, rather than disrupts, agricultural operations — a calibrated balance few pieces of welfare legislation have achieved.”
Interestingly, the Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development uses this provision to explain his government’s vision of a “calibrated balance” across rural India. Clearly, the welfare of large farmers is being sought by denying the right to fair wages of the workers, many of whom are small and marginal farmers themselves.
The MGNREGA had begun to correct a wide imbalance between employers and workers in rural India. It has, in fact, served as a kind of minimum support wage for labour in a country where the Minimum Wages Act has rarely been implemented. Even the small measure of dignity and bargaining power it gave rural workers and socially marginalised communities, led to entrenched opposition from the big feudal landlords and contractors from the very beginning.
The MGNREGA was the result of a people’s movement with a call of “Har haath ko kaam do, kaam ka poora daam do” — Every hand wants work, every work demands a just wage. VB-G RAM G may well become a scheme that ensures cheap labour for farmers, contractors, the corporate sector and agencies of the state, and enhances the already rampant inequality that exists across India. Political accountability for this Act will lie with its architects.
Dey and Roy are social activists and founder members of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS)
Political accountability for this Act will lie with its architects. 
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