The Union authorities is predicted to introduce the 2025 Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill to exchange the 2005 Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
The proposed laws will enhance the variety of assured working days to 125 per yr from the 100 days per yr beneath the present employment scheme beneath the MGNREGA.
The MGNREGA was launched in 2005 by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance and is aimed toward enhancing the livelihood safety of households in rural areas. The scheme ensures 100 days of unskilled work yearly for each rural family that desires it, overlaying all districts within the nation.
Funds for the scheme are contributed by the Centre and the state governments. While the wage invoice is borne by the Union authorities, the states share the price of supplies and administrative bills.
The new invoice proposes that the states will now bear 40% of the prices.
The governments within the North East states, Himalayan states (Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh) and the Union Territories with Legislature (Jammu and Kashmir) will contribute to 10% of the funding.
The Centre will bear all prices in Union Territories that do not need a Legislature.
The Union authorities will decide the state-wise normative allocation for every monetary yr primarily based on “goal parameters”.
It additionally proposed that solely the Union authorities can notify rural areas in a state the place the scheme can be carried out.
The proposed laws retains the supply that an individual is entitled to a each day unemployment allowance if work will not be offered inside 15 days of making use of beneath the scheme. The price of the allowance can be borne by the state governments.
On Monday, NREGA Sangharsh, a rights group representing MGNREGA staff, demanded that any modifications to the Act ought to come solely after “public disclosure and democratic consultations” with labourers, staff’ organisations, commerce unions and the states.
“We will oppose and resist this regressive step,” NREGA Sangharsh stated. “We is not going to enable the legislation, constructed from the struggles of staff, to be ended by unilateral selections.”
‘Cost-shifting by stealth, not reform’, says Opposition
Opposition MP John Brittas stated that the Union authorities was eradicating the “soul of a rights-based assure legislation” and changing it with a “conditional, centrally managed” scheme stacked in opposition to the states and the employees.
“Cost-shifting by stealth, not reform,” the Communist Party of India (Marxist) member stated. “This is the brand new federalism: states pay extra, Centre walks away, but claims the credit score.”
“This invoice doesn’t reform MGNREGA – it dismantles it fiscally, institutionally and morally,” Brittas added.
This got here two days after reviews that the Union authorities was contemplating a revamp of MGNREGA, together with a rise within the variety of assured working days.
Several states have demanded that the utmost working days beneath the scheme must be elevated.
In April, a parliamentary standing committee urged the Union authorities to increase the wages beneath the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to not less than Rs 400 per day and enhance the variety of assured working days to not less than 150 days.
Daily wages beneath scheme at the moment vary between Rs 241 and Rs 400 in numerous states.
The committee had stated that the bottom wage charges beneath the scheme must be revised to make sure that they align with present financial realities.
While the legislation ensures work for 100 days, the typical days of employment offered per family beneath the scheme was 50 days within the monetary yr 2024-’25.
On Friday, the Congress stated that the “identical MGNREGA that Narendra Modi as soon as known as a bundle of Congress’ failures” had “proved to be a lifeline for rural India”.
“Modi ji has an outdated behavior of renaming Congress’ schemes and claiming them as his personal,” the occasion chief Supriya Shrinate stated. “That’s precisely what he has been doing for the previous 11 years – rebranding UPA’s schemes together with his personal label and utilizing them for publicity.”
West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress stated on Friday that the Bharatiya Janata Party authorities’s resolution to “erase ‘Mahatma’” from MGNREGA was “not merely an administrative revision”, and was “an ideologically motivated act”.
