A STEP BACKWARD

A RIGHT THAT DEPENDS ON FISCAL DISCRETION IS NOT A RIGHT; IT IS A FAVOUR

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The passage of the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill, 2025 called the VB-G RAM G Bill, marks a decisive break from one of India's most consequential social legislations. It replaced the landmark National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) of 2005, which was later named after Mahatma Gandhi. While the government insists that the new law is a reform that raises the ceiling of guaranteed work from 100 to 125 days, this claim does not survive even cursory scrutiny. What the new Bill does, in substance, is far more troubling: it dismantles the justiciable right to work, recentralises control, shifts the fiscal burden to states, and weakens labour's bargaining power in rural India.

NREGA was never just another welfare scheme. It was a legal innovation that translated Article 41 of the Constitution - the state's obligation to secure the right to work - into an enforceable entitlement. If work was not provided within 15 days of demand, the state was legally bound to pay an unemployment allowance. Under NREGA employment was demand-driven, universal, and the right was justiciable. NREGA was a proxy for genuine unemployment insurance, a social security measure, which is still a distant dream despite the new Labour Codes. VB-GRAM G replaces this rights-based, demand led framework with a supply-driven, budget-capped scheme whose guarantees are conditional on Central allocations and administrative discretion.