The Union government’s proposed Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Bill, 2025, threatens to dismantle one of India’s most significant rights-based laws. MGNREGA, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, provides a legal entitlement for rural adults to demand work and receive employment within 15 days. The new Bill not only strips workers of this enforceable right, replacing it with a centrally controlled, budget-capped scheme, but also erases Gandhi’s name from the scheme. What might seem like a renaming is, in reality, an ideological shift: from a demand-driven system to a supply-driven model where employment depends on political and fiscal priorities rather than the needs of workers.This change is not merely technical; it is deeply ideological. The erasure of Mahatma Gandhi’s name and the rebranding of the programme as VB-G RAM G is itself a political statement. Gandhi’s name was never ornamental; it was central to the scheme’s identity and moral compass. When the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act was renamed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the intent was clear: to anchor the right to work in the ethical legacy of the Father of the Nation, whose vision of justice was rooted in “wiping the tear from the poorest person’s eye.”The expectation was that no government would dare dismantle a law explicitly anchored in Gandhi’s name and ideals. Removing his name severs India’s flagship employment programme from its historical and normative foundations, weakening the legitimacy on which it was built. Yet, this symbolic removal has gone hand in hand with substantive policy changes that systematically hollow out work guarantees for rural households.Demand-driven to discretionary logicMGNREGA is more than a welfare scheme; it is a statutory guarantee that places the worker, not the state, at the centre of policy. Under the law, any rural adult willing to perform unskilled manual labour has the legal right to demand work, and failure to provide it, triggers an unemployment allowance. The VB-G RAM G Bill fundamentally overturns this principle. Employment will be confined to areas notified by the Union government, effectively reducing a universal right to a scheme dictated by the Union’s political and fiscal priorities. In effect, a right that was once enforceable across rural India now exists solely at the government’s discretion, leaving rural workers without any guaranteed claim to employment.While the proposed legislation seeks to increase the number of workdays from 100 to 125, critics argue that this increase is largely cosmetic. Under MGNREGA, funding follows workers’ demand for employment, with the Union government assuming full responsibility for labour wages. The proposed Bill, empowers the Centre to determine state-wise “normative allocations” in advance. The Centre will not only set the budget but also decide where it will be spent. Besides, states themselves must bear any expenditure beyond these allocations.The legislation’s shift in financial responsibility significantly increases the burden on states, even as they are stripped of meaningful decision-making power. Under MGNREGA, the effective cost-sharing arrangement between the Centre and states is roughly 90:10, ensuring that states can deliver the programme without being overburdened. The new Bill, however, proposes a 60:40 split for most states, placing the heaviest strain on poorer states and those most reliant on rural employment. Confronted with tighter budgets, states may be forced to limit or stop registering demand for work, thus undermining the very guarantee the law was meant to secure. In this way, the right to work is eroded not just through formal repeal, but through fiscal constraints, making access to employment contingent on state capacity rather than legal entitlement.No work period, no local roleThe new Bill allows for pausing the programme for up to 60 days during peak agricultural seasons to “facilitate availability of labour”. This will deprive rural households of work precisely when it is most needed, forcing them into dependence on landlords and informal arrangements. A year-round right to work is replaced with a fragmented entitlement, further eroding livelihood security. Instead of providing a guarantee of work, the scheme effectively guarantees no work for two months. In addition, mandatory digital attendance at worksites is likely to create new barriers for workers, compounding the hardships faced by already vulnerable rural households.MGNREGA has been situated in the principles of decentralised governance, in line with the 73rd Constitutional Amendment, with Gram Sabhas playing a central role in planning and prioritising works based on local needs. The new Bill replaces this bottom-up approach with a top-down “National Rural Infrastructure Stack” that will dictate priorities, designs, and outcomes from above. This centralised framework threatens to override local priorities and hollow out the participatory planning process, effectively subordinating local democracy to greater technocratic control.Rollback of rights and guaranteesTaken together, the renaming and restructuring signal a decisive retreat from the idea of employment as a social and economic right, replacing it with a framework in which work is rationed according to budgetary convenience. The inevitable consequence will be fewer days of employment and a further deepening of rural distress. The highly centralised, surveillance-driven VB-G Ram G scheme being advanced by the government threatens to recast the right to work as a conditional entitlement. These changes represent more than policy tweaks; they constitute a rollback of rights, entitlements, local governance, and core constitutional values.Equally disturbing is the way this Bill has been pushed through stealthily, without consultation and without the consent or participation of workers and their representative organisations – the very people whose lives and livelihoods the right to work was meant to protect. This undemocratic approach has rightly drawn widespread criticism from opposition parties, civil society groups, and social activists. What is at stake is not merely the fate of one law, but the survival of a core democratic principle: that the State is obligated to guarantee dignity, work, and social and economic justice. Dismantling MGNREGA is, therefore, an assault on constitutional rights, and it must be resisted swiftly and decisively.Zoya Hasan is professor emerita, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.