MGNREGA REPEALED, G-RAM-G ENACTED: BEYOND JUST THE RENAMING WHAT IS THE PLAN?

The government argues that G-RAM-G will modernise rural employment by converging it with national development programmes and creating durable assets. The four priority areas and technology-enabled monitoring aim to ensure that public works contribute to long-term rural infrastructure.

- TDG NETWORK

Hundreds of rural workers seeking employment under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) staged a protest at Delhi's Jantar Mantar last week, alleging successive budget cuts and the resulting denial of work.

Employment guarantee programmes are not new to India.

In the semiarid regions of Maharashtra, agriculture is seasonal and dry spells create extreme distress. In the 1970s the state government responded with the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS), which offered unskilled work on public works during lean months. The idea of a state-guaranteed right to work gained support among researchers and activists and eventually became part of the United Progressive Alliance's 2004 election manifesto.

In August 2005 Parliament passed the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The law established a legal right to employment for rural households; every rural household whose adult members volunteered to do unskilled manual labour was entitled to at least 100 days of wage employment each financial year. The objectives were ambitious: provide at least one hundred days of unskilled work as guaranteed employment, create productive assets, strengthen the livelihood resource base of the poor, proactively ensure social inclusion and strengthen Panchayati Raj Institutions. The goals extended beyond employment to enhancing social protection, rejuvenating natural resources, creating durable rural infrastructure, empowering socially disadvantaged groups (women, SC and ST communities) and deepening grassroots democracy.

The Act was notified in September 2005 and rolled out on 2 February 2006 in 200 backward districts, gradually expanding to cover every rural district in India.