New Delhi: As 2025 drew to a close, the Narendra Modi government moved to repeal and replace the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) with the Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Act. While the repeal of the Act has been met with criticism, a look at the last decade shows the world’s largest guarantee for 100 days of work in rural areas, was systematically weakened – from reducing its budgetary allocations, introducing Aadhaar-based payment systems that resulted in job card deletions and workers exclusion, delays in payments, to finally changing the two-decade-old law itself without any prior consultation.The dramatic repeal of the MGNREGA comes in the backdrop of what P. Sainath has described India’s agrarian crisis here as the “corporate hijack of Indian agriculture.” This has been compounded by erratic changes in weather, falling income, rising rural debt, price volatility, rising farmer suicides.In August 2015, in a major climbdown, the Modi government under sustained opposition pressure dropped most of the contentious amendments to the Land Acquisition Act of 2013 that were brought through ordinance to dilute crucial provisions relating to mandatory consent from 70% of farmers, and the social impact assessment. In 2021, after a year-long protest, Modi announced that the three controversial farm laws that were bulldozed through parliament and passed in September 2020 stand repealed by the Union government.In 2023 the Modi government in a “historic decision” announced that his government would continue to provide 5 kg free ration to 80 crore poor across the country for another five years under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY), in effect taking refuge under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)-era National Food Security Act (NFSA 2013) that provided subsidised food grains to the poor. Under Modi, the scheme has undergone changes with the PMGKAY introduced in 2020 as a free ration entitlement scheme.By repealing MGNREGA, the Modi government has once again sought to bring in a fundamental change that will affect the rural economy. In stark contrast to MGNREGA, which was sent to a parliamentary committee in 2004 and eventually cleared in 2005, unanimously, the dramatic passage of the new legislation came only days after its surprise introduction towards the end of the winter session of parliament without any prior notice or consultation. The VB-G Ram G Act was passed after midnight by the Rajya Sabha, amid opposition protests, a day after it was passed in a tearing hurry in the Lok Sabha. Budget cutsA year after becoming prime minister, Modi in 2015 called the MGNREGA a “living monument to the opposition’s failures”. Through the course of his now 11-year-long tenure, the BJP-led Union government presided over reductions in the budget, followed by stagnation in its allocation in the last two years.In the 2025 budget announced in February, the government allocated Rs 86,000 crore to the scheme – the same amount as what was spent on the scheme as per the Revised Estimate of 2024-2025. Rs 86,000 crore is also the exact amount that was promised in the Union budget of 2024-25, presented in July, 2024, after the National Democratic Government came to power. Rs 86,000 crore allocation was also less than what was spent on the scheme – which is a right under the MGNREGA – in 2023-24, Rs 89,154 crore.The Wire has earlier reported that in 2023 drastically reduced the MGNREGA allocation in the Union budget to Rs 60,000 crore, which was the lowest seen in the last four budgets.Wage delaysIn March, just months before the MGNREGA was repealed, a parliamentary standing committee flagged persistent delays in the disbursement of the Union government’s share of funds under the MGNREGA. The committee had said that according to the information provided by the Department of Rural Development as of February 15, total pending liabilities of both wage and material components under the scheme is Rs 23,446.27 crore, which accounts for 27.26% of the current budget.Earlier a study in 2023 a study of 11 states found that 70% of the wage payments were credited after the mandated 15 days, while December 2022, of the 20 large states, 14 had not received more than 70% of the delayed compensation that was approved for these states.The parliamentary committee in March recommended revision of wage rates to capture the real impact of inflation on rural wages. It also suggested that the government should consider implementing a uniform wage rate across the country.Since 2021, the BJP-led government at the centre has stalled funds to West Bengal citing irregularities in the implementation of the scheme.Incidentally, MGNREGA was repealed by the centre within weeks of being told off by the Calcutta high court and the Supreme Court to pay dues to West Bengal and resume the Act.Digital payments and job card deletionsCompounding delay in wages, were mandates that brought in the NREGA Mobile Monitoring System or NMMS attendance app, Aadhaar-based payment system (ABPS).In May 2022, the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) made the NMMS app mandatory for recording workers’ attendance which was criticised for being exclusionary, distant from ground reality. The Wire has reported that the app resulted in digital enforcement without deliberation, and technological control without accountability with mandates including that workers would now be paid full wages only if two geotagged photos, one at the start and one at the end of the workday, are uploaded.The introduction of the ABPS also resulted in exclusion, job card deletions, including workers having been wrongfully removed from the system due to discrepancies between their Aadhaar details and job card records. Just in November, data from LibTech India, a consortium of academics and activists, showed nearly 27 lakh workers’ names were deleted from the MGNREGA data base between October 10 and November 14, exceeding the 10.5 lakh additions during the same period, The Hindu reported.Last year, LibTech data showed that eight crore people were removed from the MGNREGA registry during the financial years 2022-23 and 2023-24.However, the union government has told parliament when asked about deletions of job cards due to the introduction of the Aadhaar-based payment system under MGNREGA, that it has no role in job card deletions and its responsibility lies with the state governments.Final blow: Law repealed without consultationOn December 19, two decades after it was unanimously passed, the MGNREGA was repealed by parliament at midnight as the Rajya Sabha passed the Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G). The passage in the Rajya Sabha came a day after it was passed in the Lok Sabha amid protests from the opposition, and just days after the law was suddenly introduced without any prior consultation. The new law has been criticised for turning a demand driven employment guarantee to simply another supply driven central scheme, and raises concerns of over centralisation by placing the financial burden of its rollout on the states while its reins remain with the centre.Speaking to The Wire, economist Jean Drèze said that this was not the first time the Modi government tried to restrict the MGNREGA. “As soon as it came to power in 2014, the NDA government tried to restrict MGNREGA to certain districts and impose ceilings on financial allocations to states. They had to backtrack under public pressure, but later on they tried again in other ways including centralisation and technocracy,” he said.“The employment guarantee Act was meant to be an enabling Act that would enable states to have their own employment guarantee scheme. But from 2014 onwards, MGNREGA became more and more centralised, and also more technocratic, with the imposition of inappropriate technologies such as the ABPS and NMMS. MGNREGA workers have been used as guinea pigs for these immature and unreliable technologies. Delayed and unreliable wage payments have severely discouraged them. This has restrained employment generation, along with fostering corruption. When MGNREGA workers are fed up with delayed and unreliable payments, some of them cooperate with corrupt contractors who use their bank accounts as mule accounts to siphon off MGNREGA funds. That is one reason why, contrary to government claims, corruption has increased in the last ten years,” he added.“The shortcomings of MGNREGA stem from these wrong turns more than from the Act itself. The VB-GRAMG Act, unfortunately, reinforces these trends. It is the logical conclusion of long-standing hostility to MGNREGA. If you really are hostile to the Act and want to restrict or dismantle it, you end up repealing it and that is what has happened,” said Drèze.