Aruna Roy

Government is prioritising savings over MGNREGA and rights of the poor.

Thousands of crores are supposed to have been saved in this massive anti-corruption drive, but not a single criminal case has been filed. It is delusional to celebrate the Aadhaar tidal wave, and criminal to turn a blind eye to hard facts about exclusion.

For the poor, with little cash in the first place, digital promises to ‘swipe’ them out, before their marginalisation is even addressed.

The MGNREGA was inspired by the Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Act, passed in 1977, wherein policymakers found wage employment as the best way to empower people against drought

Ten years on, it is a weapon for the citizen facing arbitrary power. It needs to be protected, taken further.

Modi government has damaged the rights-based legislative framework without spelling out what will replace it.

There is a shrinking of resources for rural development. And an imposition of resource-free symbolic programmes