Repeal of MGNREGA is assault on principles of local governance, empowerment: Ex-bureaucrats

The repeal of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme amounts to an “assault on Gandhian principles of local governance and Ambedkar’s vision of empowering people with rights”, a group of 88 former bureaucrats said on Thursday.

The retired bureaucrats, who are part of the Constitutional Conduct Group, said that the promise of 125 days’ employment in the Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission Gramin Act, which replaces the MGNREGA, appears to be “hollow”. They contended that if the Union government truly wanted to provide more employment, it could have done so with the MNREGA itself.

The signatories to the statement alleged that in the past decade, the MGNREGA faced “deliberate slow poisoning”, and was eventually repealed on the grounds that it needed overhauling.

The MGNREGA, introduced in 2005 by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, guaranteed 100 days of unskilled work annually for every rural household that wants it, covering all districts in the country.

Under the VB-G RAM G, which replaces it, the number of guaranteed workdays has been increased to 125, while states’ share of costs has risen to 40%. The Union government continues to bear the wage component, with states sharing material and administrative expenses.

The new bill was given assent by the president on December 21, two days after it was passed by Parliament amid protests by Opposition parties.

The retired bureaucrats on Thursday said in an open statement that there was ample academic research and workers’ testimonies that showed the positive impact of MGNREGA. “Making employment a right was a way to address several debilitating asymmetries such as caste, class, poverty, gender, socioeconomic inequality, and bureaucratic control,” they contended.

The signatories to the statement cited studies showing that within a few years of the MGNREGA being started, workers’ incomes increased, overall poverty fell and school enrolment increased. During the Covid-19 pandemic as well, the old employment guarantee scheme proved to be a lifeline, they said.

“…MGNREGA worksites became novel schools for learning about other constitutional rights and entitlements,” the former civil servants said. “It was where liberty and fraternity became actionable as people across castes and religions worked and ate together.”

While the MGNREGA was not a perfectly implemented law, it was one of the most effective means of “involving people in processes of development and democracy,” the ex-bureaucrats said.

They, however, said that the old scheme was under strain in the past 10 years because of “woefully inadequate budget allocation”, and wage rates that remained below minimum wages in most states, in violation of Supreme Court orders.

The former bureaucrats also contended that the [VB-RAM G] scheme became a “laboratory of technocratic adventures like the National Mobile Monitoring System [NMMS] attendance app and the imposition of Aadhaar Based Payment System [ABPS]”. These measures, they argued, led to the denial or work and wages, and to exclusions.

“The VB-G RAM G Act does not address any existing concerns of MGNREGA but will only worsen the condition of rural workers and will increase corruption,” the ex-bureaucrats said. They contended that the new Act does away with the demand-driven nature of the MGNREGA, and turns states “into supplicants of the Union government”.

The Centre “has turned right to work into a centrally sponsored scheme for the central government, and an unquantified legal and financial responsibility of state governments”, the signatories to the open statement alleged.

Also read:

• MGNREGA gone, Centre is puppet master of new scheme with no guarantees
• The end of MGNREGA is the undoing of a social revolution in rural India