One of the pioneering flagship programmes of the erstwhile United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government led by the late Manmohan Singh was the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).Conceived as a legally enforceable right-to-work scheme, duly budgeted by the Union government each financial year, the project has been a demand-driven initiative for unskilled labour out of work in rural India.The scheme has provided for the issuance of “job cards” on demand, which once obtained, entitle the citizen to be accorded unskilled work within fifteen days of getting the card. Failing the provision of such mandatory work, the MNREGA requires the payment of unemployment allowance for days lost at statutory minimum wage of the day. The entire pecuniary burden of the scheme was borne by the Union government.Thirty three per cent of the job cards would thus far be reserved for women aspirants to such work. The scheme is aimed at reducing rural unemployment and gender imbalance in the matter of gainful work, preventing rural migration, building non-machine-driven assets in the hinterlands including those which facilitate better road access, water availability, fish pond construction, vegetable growth and so on.During the Covid pandemic, MGNREGA proved its worth beyond measure, as a vanguard provider within the Panchayati Raj order of rural self-dependence. Given that the scheme, first passed as an Act in 2005, drew its structural and ideological inspiration from the work and belief system of Mahatma Gandhi, the scheme was renamed after him in 2009 on October 2, his birth date.The new proposed legislation now in ParliamentThe Union government has introduced a new Bill titled ‘The Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (GRAMIN): VB-G RAM G (विकसित भारत—जी राम जी) Bill, 2025’, which, if passed, will repeal and replace MGNREGA. The recast scheme will no longer be a wholly centrally financed one but to be paid up by state governments to 40% of budgetary support.What projects the states may undertake under the new scheme will now be stipulated not by the panchayats or state governments but by the Union government. During times of sowing and harvesting, the scheme will stand abrogated in order not to starve farming from the labour need for those seasons.The scheme will thus no longer be entitled to be called “demand driven”, obliging the state to necessarily provide work to those seeking it.ImplicationsFinancial wranglings between state governments and the Centre are set to proliferate, making the prospect of payment of mandatory wages to labourers on time dicey. The Union government will not but be tempted to direct work to be given in such states and such areas as may yield political benefits to the party in power.Indeed, the type of work to be assigned to job card holders may also no longer be a decision made locally by rural authorities or state governments but by central satraps. Will the new Bill be sent to a Select Committee for detailed scrutiny, we do not know till now.Removing Mahatma Gandhi’s nameHere is the cultural-historical import of the new legislation:The meta-historical urgency of the right-wing since 2014 has been to hasten single-mindedly to obliterate all signages, inscriptions, emblems, logos, captions of buildings, offices, institutions, academies, existent projects, all other previous histories that pertain to the era of governance by the Indian National Congress – an ideological overhaul of a type one associates with the practices of invading forces.The most deleterious consequence of this revanchist project has been in the matter of what educational institutions now may teach, who they may appoint, and what areas of knowledge-seeking must remain taboo.This project to reformulate India by reworking the nomenclatures and authorship of its assets and achievements has of course included throwing as much dirt on the Nehru era and the family after him as could be profitably deployed. That project has in recent years seen a great leap forward as more than 90% of the corporate electronic and other media space has come to be vassal to the Modi dispensation. The change of name of the MGNREGA now attempts the final blow of obliteration.Who does not know that Gandhi has always been a thorn in the side of the right-wing for having defined swaraj as the unity of Hindus and Muslims in independent India. So, on January 30, 1948 he came to be shot at point blank range by a Maharashtrian Brahmin of the name of Nathuram Godse. At his trial, Godse claimed he had left the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) long ago.However, his younger brother, Gopal godse, who was imprisoned as a convict in the Gandhi murder case, after his release admitted freely to Arvind Rajagopal of the Frontline magazine in January, 1994 that the brothers had never left the RSS.Asked why Nathuram had lied about this at the trial, Gopal Godse said that this was in order to save ‘Guru’ M.S. Golwalkar who had been in difficulty.The most telling observations pertaining to the connect between the Gandhi murder and the RSS was to come from the then home minister of independent India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, now the darling of the Modi regime.In letters written to Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and Golwalkar, the staunch Congressman, Sardar, wrote:To Mukerjee, letter dated July 18, 1948 –“As regards the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha the case pertaining to Gandhi ji’s murder is sub judice and i should not like to say anything about the participation of the two organisations, but our reports do confirm that as a result of the activities of these two bodies, particularly the former, an atmosphere was created in the country in which such ghastly tragedy became possible. The activities of the RSS constituted a clear threat to the existence of government and the state…Indeed as time has marched on the RSS circles are becoming more defiant, and are indulging in their subversive activities in an increasing measure,…” To Golwalkar on September 11, 1948 –Acknowledging the good work done by the RSS cadres for Hindus, Patel wrote “the objectionable part arose when they began attacking musalmans. all their speeches were full of communal poison…As a result of the poison the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhi ji… In fact opposition to the RSS grew when the RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhi Ji’s death.”Erasing Gandhi has thus been pivotal to the right-wing project of recasting India as a Hindu Rashtra, not just as a de facto entity but now a de jure one too.The powers-that-be are thus testing the waters: should the seemingly innocuous technicality of removing the Mahatma’s name from the Employment Guarantee Scheme draw no more than the customary noises, the job is half done.What after all is left after Gandhi is erased?For sometime of course the “double engine” will continue to play its double game: wreaths will continue to be placed at Rajghat by visiting dignitaries, even as project nibble-at-Gandhi, and by extension everything he stood for gets carried further in ways no longer too subtle now. Till a point perhaps when Einstein may come to be proved right when he said “coming generations will not believe that such a one as him ever walked this earth in flesh and blood.”Nothing would suit the Indian right-wing than for that prophecy to come true.Badri Raina taught English at Delhi University.