AA Edit | No Job Guarantee In RAM-G: Will It Ensure Rural Welfare?

The Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Bill, which Parliament passed recently, does not just drop the name of Mahatma Gandhi from the rural employment guarantee scheme MGNREGA, but will also change the very concept of the job guarantee that an entire generation grew up with.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005, was unique in many aspects. Under this law, the Central government spent nearly 90 per cent of the funds to provide 100 days of work to unskilled rural labour. If an adult from an economically impoverished family sought work, the gram panchayat was supposed to provide it to him or her within 15 days. The works to be taken up were decided by the gram panchayat.

Due to government-fixed wages, MGNREGA increased the bargaining power of unskilled workers and raised their incomes substantially. On the flip side, however, it also pushed up the cost of food production, leading to astronomically high inflation during the UPA government’s rule and ushering in mechanisation in various farm activities.

Section 4 (1), (2) and (3) of Schedule I, framed under Section 4(3) of the MGNREGA, clearly mandated that at least 60 per cent of the works should be aimed at creating assets, and non-tangible works such as removing grass and agricultural operations should not be taken up.

Nevertheless, MGNREGA notoriously got labelled as a “dig-here-and-dig-there” scheme. Its critics allege that it failed to create durable assets, even though over Rs 10 lakh crores was spent in the last 20 years. The new VB-G RAM G Bill, however, aims to address this concern by making it mandatory for gram panchayats to take up works chosen by the Centre.

While it is advisable for villages to align their work with the national agenda to maximise the country’s economic growth, the new bill robs gram panchayats’ freedom to cater to local needs, which are mostly unique to every village.

The new bill promises employment guarantee for 125 days, as against 100 days under MGNREGA. However, with works getting aligned to the national agenda, they will require greater planning. As a result, work is unlikely to be provided on demand, potentially erasing the USP of MGNREGA.

The provision of a work holiday under the new bill during agricultural operations will erode the bargaining power of unskilled labour. While it could lead to stable food production costs and stable food prices, it could also expose unskilled labour to exploitation.

The new bill expects state governments to bear 40 per cent of the job guarantee cost. As states have limited revenue scope, they could somehow discourage people from seeking work under the job guarantee scheme. Therefore, the key concern with the new bill is its attempt to achieve price stability at the cost of rural labour. If the BJP government believed MGNREGA was badly designed, it should not have continued it for 11 years.

If the new bill really leads to the economic transformation of villages, resulting in Gram Swaraj and Suraj as Mahatma Gandhi had yearned for, he would not mind his name getting dropped from it. So, it is up to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to prove who is right and who is wrong.