🌾 Support MGNREGA Restoration 🌾

The Modi government has introduced a new scheme called VB-GRAM G to effectively abolish MGNREGA by removing Mahatma Gandhi's name and dismantling the law that declared 100 days of work as a legal right of the people. This policy of the Modi government is a cruel attack on the lives and livelihoods of the agricultural workers and rural poor. We unequivocally oppose the withdrawal of MNREGA and the new VB-G RAM G scheme.

We, the working people of India, strongly oppose the decision to dismantle the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). In its place, the Modi government has introduced a scheme called VB-GRAM G, which contains several deeply harmful provisions.

• Replacing a law that guarantees employment on demand with a scheme under which people can work only if the government chooses to provide work is an anti-people move. Rural employment must be generated according to the needs of workers living in India's villages. The Union Government must increase the employment allocations accordingly. Restricting employment to a pre-determined financial ceiling and centralising all powers in the Union Government is unacceptable.
• Under the new VB-GRAM G scheme, once the financial limit fixed by the Union Government is exhausted, the statutory right to employment guaranteed under MGNREGA will be denied. This situation is extremely harmful, and runs the risk of withdrawing from guaranteeing employment opportunities.
• Rural employment guarantee must remain the full responsibility of the Union Government. The new rule that forces State Governments to bear 40% of the project cost will further weaken already financially stressed states. This will inevitably reduce rural employment opportunities.
• The government's withdrawal from guaranteeing work during the agricultural season — through the compulsory 60-day work suspension rule — will push landless agricultural labourers into distress and force them to accept lower wages. During droughts and other unforeseen crises, they will be left without even minimal relief.
• The fixing of minimum wages was a key legal protection provided by MGNREGA. By removing this safeguard, the Modi government is destroying workers' statutory right to minimum wages and their collective bargaining power.
• The concentration of all authority in the hands of the Union Government is against the basic principles of federalism.
• Further, removing Mahatma Gandhi's name from the scheme erases its historical legacy and insults the values of India's freedom struggle.

Therefore, we demand that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) be reinstated and strengthened. Further, we additionally demand the following provisions:

• Increase guaranteed workdays to 200 days per year
• Fix the minimum daily wage at ₹700
• Ensure daily wages are paid without delay
• Empower Gram Sabhas to plan, supervise, and monitor the programme
• Integrate MGNREGA with agriculture and allied sectors
• Implement the Act as a genuine solution to the agrarian crisis, rural indebtedness, distress migration in search of livelihoods, and agricultural labour' suicides

We urge the Government of India to immediately withdraw the VB-GRAM G scheme and protect and expand MGNREGA in the interest of India's rural workers.