The end of MGNREGA is the undoing of a social revolution in rural India

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme scrapped by the Narendra Modi government last week was never just an employment scheme.

Introduced in 2005 when rural India was reeling from agrarian distress and shrinking employment opportunities, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme helped shift everyday power relations by weakening hierarchies of dependence and coercion that have historically structured rural social life – particularly for workers from oppressed caste groups.

The scheme was implemented when neoliberal programmes were reshaping India’s economy at the expense of the working poor. At a time of jobless growth, the promise of 100 days of guaranteed employment per year to each rural household that asked for it did more than provide income: it strengthened the voice of workers in everyday economic and social life.

For many rural households, particularly those dependent on casual labour, the scheme became a critical source of stability in a time of otherwise uncertain livelihoods. It offered breathing space to the Indian working class, especially women and marginalised caste groups.

The economic effects of MGNREGS have been well documented. It increased incomes and savings among landless labourers and improved their bargaining power vis a vis landowning cultivators. By setting a floor to wages, the programme increased daily earnings for men and women in several states.

It also set off profound social changes.

Unlike China or several East Asian countries, India failed to carry out meaningful land reforms after Independence. As a result, traditional power structures rooted in caste and land ownership remained largely intact in rural areas. For a working-class person from a marginalised caste, and even more so for a woman, everyday life continued to be shaped by several layers of oppression and domination.

Yet rural society has not been static. Across India, working class and oppressed caste groups have resisted and negotiated for greater rights and dignity. The expansion of non-farm employment in urban areas also opened up new avenues, weakening older forms of dependence on dominant-caste landlords.

MGNREGS was introduced precisely at this moment, when social change was already underway and waiting to be consolidated.

By offering an alternative source of employment, the scheme enhanced the bargaining power of landless labourers. In many villages, traditional labour arrangements such as the jajmani system, a caste based and hierarchical patron-client relationship involving year-round service obligations, began to weaken.

Cowherds and other attached labourers, who were bound to specific employers through long term obligations, refused to return to customary work and chose instead to work on MGNREGS sites. Farmers complained of labour shortages as workers preferred government employment to poorly paid and often humiliating agrarian work.

Customary labour relations marked by dominance and extra-economic coercion began to erode further. These relations were sustained through caste hierarchy, social dependence, and the threat of withdrawal of work, credit, or everyday support, leaving labourers with little real choice over wages or conditions.

The social consequences of MGNREGS were far reaching. Lower-caste workers gained greater ability to make choices, negotiate wages and challenge long-standing social subordination. Women, in particular, emerged as major beneficiaries. Paid work under MGNREGS gave many women an income of their own. Having cash in hand expanded their everyday choices, reduced economic dependence on male bread winners, and made their contribution to household income more visible.

In several regions, MGNREGS worked in tandem with other welfare programmes such as the public distribution system for foodgrains and self help group-based credit facilities. Together, these interventions improved living standards and enhanced women’s economic security.

For many agricultural labourers, income from farm work had been used for daily consumption, while MGNREGS earnings allowed them to save and repay debts. It created space for planning, autonomy and a degree of financial resilience.

MGNREGS thus unleashed a quiet social revolution in the countryside. It did not abolish hierarchy or inequality but it disrupted them. It created room for dignity, negotiation and refusal in places where these were long denied.

The costs of dismantling the MGNREGS will not be evenly borne. They will fall disproportionately on women, landless workers and marginalised caste groups. What is being presented as efficiency or reform risks restoring monopoly control over labour and livelihoods to landlords and dominant castes. Any vision of a developed India that is built on such exclusions is a vision that deepens inequality rather than resolves it.

Yadu CR is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Water, Environment, Land and Livelihoods (WELL) Labs in Bengaluru.