HEY RAM! RIP, MAHATMA GANDHI NREGA

“My political instincts tell me that MNREGA should not be discontinued, because it is a living monument to the failures of the Congress party. After so many years in power, all you were able to deliver was for a poor man to dig ditches a few days a month.”

- PM Narendra Modi

MGNREGA has been a lifeline for millions of rural Indians and proved its worth when the economy collapsed. It is not charity — it is a legal guarantee that protects dignity and livelihoods.- Rahul Gandhi

For nearly two decades, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act occupied a singular place in India’s policy landscape. It was not conceived as another welfare programme to be expanded or trimmed at the convenience of fiscal arithmetic. Enacted in 2005, MNREGA was a statutory employment guarantee — a legal commitment that gave rural households the right to demand work and imposed a binding obligation on the State to respond. In moments of economic stress, it functioned as a floor beneath livelihoods, signalling that when markets fail, the Republic would not. That foundational promise now stands weakened, if not quietly dismantled, with the passage of the Gram Rozgar Bill. Presented as reform and modernisation, the legislation instead marks a shift away from a law-backed entitlement towards a managed programme, its guarantees increasingly mediated by administrative discretion and fiscal convenience.

The manner of its passage only sharpens the concern. The bill was placed on the agenda, introduced and cleared by voice vote in both Houses, leaving Members of Parliament across parties protesting that they had insufficient time to study provisions that alter the architecture of one of India’s largest employment programmes. Demands for detailed scrutiny and committee examination were brushed aside. For a law of this scale and consequence, the speed was not merely striking — it was shocking.

Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra argued that MNREGA was never intended to be a favour dispensed by the government, but a legal assurance to the poorest — one that loses meaning the moment it becomes conditional or discretionary.

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra also pointedly remarked that Mahatma Gandhi did not belong to her family, underscoring that the law’s name was never about dynastic ownership but about constitutional values — a rebuke to what she described as the government’s selective discomfort with the Gandhi legacy.

Congress MP Manish Tewari warned that Parliament was being reduced to a rubber stamp, while Jairam Ramesh cautioned that the bill signalled a retreat from a legally enforceable entitlement towards an administratively controlled scheme. These concerns did not remain confined to one party.

The Trinamool Congress, through MPs such as Mahua Moitra and Derek O’Brien, raised alarms over the bill’s federal implications, arguing that it hollowed out a national employment guarantee by transferring financial responsibility to States already grappling with constrained revenues. MNREGA, they pointed out, was premised on the recognition that employment security is a national obligation — one that cannot be devolved without consequence.

The numbers tell their own story. Under MNREGA, the Centre bore 100% of the wage cost, 75% of material expenditure, and the full administrative expenses. This architecture acknowledged that a legal guarantee to work could not be made contingent on the fiscal health of individual States. The Gram Rozgar Bill unsettles this balance by nudging States towards a greater share of expenditure, even as they remain dependent on central grants to sustain their own welfare commitments. For poorer and migration-prone States, this looks less like cooperative federalism and more like quiet cost-shifting.

Disquiet has reportedly extended even to allies. Parliamentary sources indicate that the Telugu Desam Party conveyed reservations over the fiscal implications of the bill, particularly for States running expansive welfare programmes. Whether Chandrababu Naidu will translate these murmurs into a firm political stand remains uncertain. Weighed down by the legacy of cases initiated against him during the Jagan Mohan Reddy government, the TDP chief operates on a delicate wicket, where caution may outweigh confrontation.

Beyond questions of process and funding lies a deeper policy rupture. MNREGA was deliberately designed to be demand-driven. A rural household could seek work, and the State was legally bound to provide it within a stipulated timeframe or pay compensation. That statutory spine empowered citizens, strengthened labour’s bargaining position and provided a dependable fallback during agricultural lean seasons. Critics argue that the new bill subtly inverts this logic, replacing enforceable demand with administratively mediated supply.

CPM members such as John Brittas and AA Rahim have consistently argued that MNREGA was never merely about wage transfers but about dignity, decentralised planning and labour protection — all of which erode when legal enforceability weakens.

The government’s defence rests on familiar claims: efficiency, transparency, improved asset creation. Few dispute the need for reform. MNREGA has long suffered from delayed payments, uneven implementation and bureaucratic inertia. Yet critics counter that none of these flaws required dismantling the legal framework that made the programme distinctive. Technology could have strengthened delivery, audits could have been enforced, and accountability tightened — without renaming or restructuring the law itself.

Scepticism also greets the promise of increased eligible workdays under the new framework. MPs from the Samajwadi Party, including Dharmendra Yadav and Dimple Yadav, have pointed out that eligibility means little if work itself is unavailable. In many regions, employment is routinely curtailed during agricultural seasons, precisely when rural distress peaks. Without assured availability of work, expanded eligibility risks remaining a paper promise rather than a lived reality.

It is worth recalling what MNREGA actually delivered before it became a political punching bag. By putting cash directly into rural hands, it expanded purchasing power at the bottom of the pyramid, stabilised consumption and acted as a counter-cyclical buffer during periods of economic stress. Over the years, multiple studies pointed to its impact on rural wages, women’s participation in the workforce and the moderation of distress migration. During the global financial crisis and later during the pandemic-induced economic collapse, MNREGA helped keep rural demand alive when private employment dried up. In a consumption-driven economy, that contribution mattered — not ideologically, but arithmetically.

That record makes the Modi government’s evident discomfort with the Gandhi imprint on the law harder to dismiss as coincidence. The aversion does not appear limited to policy design; it extends to political memory. When a law named after Mahatma Gandhi — one rooted in decentralisation, dignity of labour and constitutional restraint — is diluted and rebranded, it invites an unavoidable question: is this merely reform, or part of a broader effort to edge Gandhi out of the everyday vocabulary of governance?

When a law anchored in Mahatma Gandhi’s name gives way to a rebranded framework layered with cultural signalling, the issue extends beyond employment. The transition from a Gandhi-named, law-backed entitlement to a culturally coded framework invites a broader reflection on how governance is being reimagined, and how civilisational signifiers such as “Ram” increasingly shape the language of the state. In that shift lies a deeper question about political memory — about what, and who, the Republic chooses to foreground in public policy.

Ironically, in attempting to recast MNREGA, the BJP may have inadvertently handed the Opposition a rare opening. The question is whether it will seize it. The record so far is discouraging. The Opposition has repeatedly squandered moments that should have reshaped the political contest — from the electoral bonds revelations to the incoherent ‘Vote Chori’ campaign, and most glaringly, the failure to convert the visibility of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatras into sustained political pressure.

Yet this moment is different. The dilution of MNREGA touches livelihoods, federal balance and constitutional principle. It offers a concrete, fact-based issue around which an Opposition could unite — stripped of rhetorical excess and shorn of the politics of religious signalling. Whether the Congress and its allies can rise to that challenge remains to be seen. Politics, as the BJP has demonstrated repeatedly, is serious business — disciplined, relentless and strategic. If the Opposition is equally serious about offering a credible alternative, it will have to learn that lesson quickly.

If it cannot, the trajectory is clear — a steady slide into one-party dominance, with Parliament reduced to a formality, scrutiny dismissed as an inconvenience, power exercised without accountability, questions neither asked nor answered, and democracy recast as an audience rather than a participant.

(The columnist is a Mumbai-based author and independent media veteran, running websites and a youtube channel known for his thought-provoking messaging.)