More Days, Weaker Rights: The Governance Trade-offs in India’s New Rural Employment Design
The success of rural employment reform will depend less on how many objectives are added and more on whether workers can still claim work when distress hits
A background note can be accessed here: Lok Sabha Introduced the VB-G RAM G Bill, 2025
Trithendu Nandi: Convergence cell Lead, Seven Sisters Development Assistance (SeSTA)
SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
Ministry of Rural Development | Ministry of Panchayati Raj | Ministry of Finance
The Bill raises the statutory employment guarantee from 100 to 125 days and introduces saturation-led planning through Viksit Gram Panchayat Plans. What governance risks and opportunities arise from this shift away from MGNREGA’s demand-driven framework?
These changes alter the balance between legal entitlement and administrative planning.
MGNREGA’s core strength has been its demand-driven design, allowing households to seek work during periods of distress such as crop failure, floods, or livelihood shocks. Saturation-led planning risks weakening this responsiveness. If employment is largely tied to pre-approved works, households whose needs fall outside plan assumptions may find it harder to access work, turning a legal right into a conditional benefit.
This shift also raises political-economy risks. Centrally guided planning frameworks can reduce Panchayat autonomy and introduce uneven labour budget approvals, work sanctions, and fund flows across states – undermining MGNREGA’s character as a uniform national entitlement.
Assam’s experience in the last five years illustrates the limits of headline guarantees. Despite the 100-day entitlement, average days of employment per household have remained between 30 and 40, and less than 2 percent of households complete even 100 days. Without fixing wage delays, weak demand registration, and inadequate work availability, increasing the ceiling to 125 days risks being symbolic.
That said, saturation planning can improve asset quality and convergence if it is co-created with communities, anchored in Gram Sabha oversight, and backed by enforceable demand-based safeguards that preserve households’ right to seek work beyond plan assumptions.
As the scheme moves toward centrally guided saturation planning and cost-sharing with states, what risks to accountability and community voice emerge, and what safeguards are needed to ensure employment remains a credible income guarantee rather than becoming a discretionary, supply-driven programme?
The primary risk is not asset quality but dilution of accountability. When employment shifts from being demand-triggered to plan-triggered, workers lose their strongest enforcement tool: the ability to formally claim work as a right.
Centralised planning can further marginalise Gram Sabhas, reducing community participation from decision-making to consultation. This disproportionately affects marginalised households that depend on MGNREGA during distress periods. The danger is subtle but profound: employment may continue on paper while the right to demand it erodes in practice.
Cost-sharing arrangements complicate responsibility for failures. Wage delays – already a major deterrent to participation – often lead to blame-shifting between the Centre and the States. For poor households, delayed wages translate directly into food insecurity, debt, and loss of trust.
Weak demand registration systems compound this problem. In many areas, workers are discouraged from formally recording demand, allowing administrations to deny employment without overt legal violation. Grievance mechanisms exist but remain inaccessible to women, elderly workers, and remote communities.
Saturation planning can support convergence, but only if non-negotiables are protected: time-bound wage payments with compensation, clear accountability across levels of government, independent social audits, transparent information systems, and strong Gram Sabha authority. Without these, the new Bill risks becoming discretionary rather than rights-based.
The Bill integrates rural works across water security, infrastructure, livelihoods, and extreme-weather mitigation. Compared to MGNREGA’s broader and more flexible list of permissible works, does this represent a restrictive scope? Are policymakers placing too many objectives onto a welfare scheme in ways that could suppress its core employment-guarantee function?
The Bill’s integration of works across water security, infrastructure, livelihoods, and climate resilience reflects important development priorities. The risk lies not in ambition alone, but in how these objectives interact with employment generation on the ground.
MGNREGA has historically allowed a broad and flexible set of permissible works, enabling Panchayats to design labour-intensive projects suited to local conditions and seasonal distress. Increasing thematic focus, combined with caps on the number of ongoing works, can reduce this flexibility. Panchayats may struggle to generate sufficient work even if legal entitlements rise.
Implementation constraints already illustrate this tension. In Assam, large unpaid material liabilities have stalled works and prevented their closure, limiting the initiation of new projects. High material dues weaken planning capacity and reduce employment continuity, irrespective of headline guarantees.
There is also a structural risk of objective overload. Climate resilience, durable infrastructure, and livelihood promotion are valuable, but when asset outcomes dominate planning logic, labour intensity can decline. MGNREGA’s foundational purpose is social protection – providing employment during distress. If employment becomes secondary to asset optimisation, the scheme risks failing its core function.
Development outcomes should strengthen, not substitute, the employment guarantee. Preserving flexibility, labour intensity, and Panchayat discretion is essential if integration is to support – rather than suppress – income security.
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Views are personal.