The Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) denounces the utterly retrograde move of the Central Govt to virtually dismantle the Mahatma Gandhi RURAL Employment Guarantee Act and totally dilute the right of the rural households to employment guarantee for 100 days in a year leaving it to the mercy of the executive/govts through introducing a new Bill called Vikasit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill 2025.

The new Bill proposes to ensure 125 days employment instead of 100 and that is nothing but an utterly deceptive exercise and the purpose of the Bill to totally dilute the demand-based provision under the MNREGA to exclude large section of entitled rural folk from the coverage of the guaranteed employment scheme on ground so called rationalization of job-cards to be decided by the bureaucrats/govts.  Added to this is making digital-attendance mandatory for the job-seeker, which will promote further exclusion of the entitled people seeking job under the scheme. Promoting multi-prong perverse method to ensure exclusion and hence the obligation of the Govt is one of the central motive behind the Bill.

Further sabotaging measure through this Bill is the fund allocation by Centre, it being a central scheme as per the enactment. The hundred percent centrally funded demand-based scheme of employment guarantee under previous MNREGA is now proposed to be a scheme based on 40% cost to be transferred to state govts  in addition to  the funding responsibility of paying unemployment allowance and delay compensation by the states, although decision making power will remain with the centre. Introduction of so called “normative allocation” with statewise expenditure ceiling imposed by the centre and excess expenditure burden on the states—will further lead to exclusion and also curtailment of benefits committed under the previous MNREGA.

In the background of  increasingly centralised control on financial resource management in the country trampling the basic character of federalism and arrogant violation of resource sharing norms between the centre and the states, leading to discriminatory treatment to several state govts, the retrograde provisions under proposed VB-GRAMG Bill will  make the rural job-seekers under the MNREGA  the tragic victim of exclusion and deprivation in already crisis-ridden rural economy.

CITU condemns the inhuman atrocious project of the Modi Govt to sabotaging and dismantling MNREGA scheme and demands scrapping of the Bill forthright. CITU calls upon the working people to unite, oppose and resist.

(Tapan Sen )
General Secretary