Rationing a Right

India's rural employment story is not merely about jobs or budgets; it is about how the Indian state defines its obligations to its poorest citizens.

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Over four decades, the country's flagship employment programmes have quietly but decisively shifted in character ~ from discretionary relief, to a rights-based guarantee, and now towards a more tightly managed, fiscally rationed framework. This arc tells us as much about governance and constitutional values as it does about rural livelihoods. Early rural employment schemes treated work as welfare. Employment was offered when funds and administrative will allowed, often filtered through local hierarchies that mirrored rural inequality itself. The state was a benefactor, not an obligor. This changed dramatically in the mid-2000s, when Parliament transformed wage employment into a legal entitlement. The rural worker was no longer a supplicant but a claimant, empowered to demand work and, in principle, to hold the administration accountable for failure. That shift carried deep constitutional meaning: it located economic security within the language of rights and anchore