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Mahatma Gandhi believed that India lives in its villages. His idea of Gram Swaraj rested on the dignity of labour, decentralisation of power, self-reliant communities, and the moral responsibility of the State to ensure that no Indian is left hungry or unemployed. For Gandhi, work was not charity; it was a right inseparable from human dignity. Political freedom, he warned, would ring hollow if it failed to secure livelihoods for India’s villages.
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) was the most serious attempt in independent India to translate this vision into enforceable public policy. Enacted as a legal right rather than a discretionary welfare scheme, it redefined the relationship between the rural citizen and the State.
But today, that architecture is under strain. Over the past decade, MNREGA’s legal guarantees have been steadily weakened through funding constraints, administrative centralisation, delayed wage payments, and policy restructuring. What was designed as a demand-driven right is increasingly being reduced to a capped, scheme-based intervention — even as rural distress deepens and employment insecurity grows.
It is in this context that the Indian National Congress has announced a nationwide mobilisation, ‘MGNREGA Bachao Sangram’, to be held from January 10 to February 25, opposing the proposed VB G RAM G Act and the dilution of MNREGA’s rights-based framework. The agitation is aimed at defending the Act’s constitutional intent, decentralised structure, and core guarantee of employment as a legal entitlement.
Manmohan Singh govt: Turning Gandhian ideals into law
In 2005, under Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi, the UPA government enacted MNREGA as a rights-based, demand-driven law, and not a discretionary scheme dependent on annual budgets. The Act guaranteed every rural household up to 100 days of wage employment, backed by legal accountability, social audits, and decentralised implementation through panchayati raj institutions.
The Manmohan Singh government viewed MNREGA as both an economic stabiliser and a moral obligation. It was designed to protect rural households during agricultural lean seasons, natural calamities, and market shocks, while also creating durable community assets. The Act combined economic logic with ethical governance, reflecting the UPA’s broader approach to social policy.
MNREGA was revolutionary because it reshaped power on the ground. By transforming rural employment from discretionary welfare into a legally enforceable right, it reduced workers’ dependence on contractors, local elites, and political patrons who had long controlled access to jobs and relief. Work could now be demanded from the State as a legal entitlement, rather than negotiated through unequal social relations.
This shift altered the state–citizen relationship. Local administrations became accountable to workers, not arbiters of benevolence. At the village level, social audits and transparency mechanisms weakened the monopoly of intermediaries over information and constrained corruption. At the same time, channeling wage employment into the creation of local assets linked income support to long-term productive capacity, strengthening collective ownership of development outcomes. Together, these features redistributed power downward, embedding economic security within democratic oversight rather than patronage.
This was governance rooted in Gandhi’s values and the Constitution.
How MNREGA reshaped rural India
Over time, MNREGA became a critical pillar of rural India. It acted as a lifeline during droughts and agrarian crises, guaranteeing work when private employment collapsed and preventing hunger in vulnerable households. At its peak, the programme generated nearly 300 crore person-days of employment in a single year, injecting purchasing power directly into rural economies and reducing distress migration.
Women accounted for nearly half of MNREGA’s workforce nationwide, gaining independent incomes and social recognition. Dalits and Adivasis, who constitute around 40% of beneficiaries, accessed dignified, legally protected work without contractors or caste-based exploitation.
In Kerala, MNREGA became a backbone of local governance. Gram panchayats consistently provided close to the full 100 days of work, women constituted nearly 90% of workers in several years, and the programme played a crucial role in sustaining rural households during floods, droughts, and post-pandemic recovery. Few policies in independent India have combined economic relief, social justice, and dignity of labour as powerfully as MNREGA.
Crucially, the programme also strengthened agriculture itself through water harvesting, soil conservation, and irrigation works, making villages more resilient to climate shocks.
UPA and historic poverty reduction
Between 2004 and 2014, India witnessed one of the largest reductions in poverty globally, with nearly 250 million people lifted out of poverty. This was achieved not by abandoning the poor, but by combining economic growth with social justice.
MNREGA played a central role in this transformation by stabilising rural incomes, raising wage floors, and acting as a shock absorber during economic and climatic distress. It reflected a people-first economic model, and not optics-driven governance.
Modi govt’s systematic dismantling of MNREGA
Since 2014, the Modi government has treated MNREGA with clear ideological hostility. The dismantling has been gradual but deliberate. Budgets have been routinely exhausted months before the financial year ended, forcing states to deny work or halt projects.
In Kerala, despite high demand and strong panchayat capacity, wages were delayed for weeks and even months during the Aadhaar-Based Payment System rollout. Thousands of workers were left unpaid due to technical rejections and central fund bottlenecks, rather than any failure of local governments.
Across north India, the pattern has been even starker. Rajasthan and West Bengal repeatedly reported fund freezes and pending liabilities, triggering mass protests by MNREGA workers over unpaid wages. In Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, payment delays stretching 60 to 90 days became routine, violating the law’s 15-day payment guarantee and pushing workers into debt. Delay compensation was withheld or normalised into non-payment, effectively institutionalising wage theft.
Decision-making was centralised through opaque digital controls — mandatory ABPS, MIS shutdowns, and algorithmic fund releases — weakening panchayats and paralysing implementation. The legal guarantee of 100 days was diluted into a budget-capped scheme. Efforts to restructure and rename the programme, including removing Gandhi’s name, signal an attempt to erase the ethical core of the Act and its historical intent.
Rural economy in distress
The effects are now unmistakable: falling rural demand, rising migration, unpaid wages, and deepening insecurity. MNREGA was designed as a counter-cyclical stabiliser, safeguarding incomes during lean seasons, disasters, and market shocks. Weakening it threatens livelihoods and risks depressing consumption, widening inequality, and increasing social vulnerability.
The rural economy is not failing by chance. Rather, it is being pushed to the brink by policy neglect.
Congress-led nationwide agitation
In response to this structural failure, the Indian National Congress’s forthcoming nationwide agitation is not a political add-on but a constitutional and economic corrective. It seeks to restore MNREGA’s legal and moral foundations and protect rural livelihoods and dignity.
The movement will demand full and timely funding of MNREGA, immediate clearance of wage arrears, restoration of the legal right to work, decentralisation and empowerment of panchayats, and protection of the programme’s Gandhian and constitutional character.
This agitation is a response to policy choices that have undermined India’s villages, weakened democratic decentralisation, and jeopardised rural economic security. It is a fight to ensure that Gandhi’s vision of Gram Swaraj — self-reliant villages, social justice, and dignity of labour — remains alive, and that rural India is not abandoned in the name of ideology.
MNREGA remains one of India’s most significant social legislations, rooted in Gandhian values, constitutional principles, and economic pragmatism. Its dilution raises fundamental questions about development priorities and social justice.
As India debates its path toward growth and global leadership, the fate of MNREGA will signal whether the country remains committed to inclusive development, or shifts toward a narrower vision that risks leaving rural India behind.
Vijay Thottathil is a social media influencer and Indian National Congress Party worker, he is also President for INCAS Dubai Kozhikode District Committee. (https://x.com/vijaythottathil)