Technology-driven verification in welfare delivery improves transparency but risks exclusion. Evaluate this with reference to VB-G RAM G.

The VB-G RAM G Act, 2025 replaced MGNREGA from 1 July 2026. It builds its 125-day wage guarantee on face authentication, biometric e-KYC, geo-tagging and AI analytics [1][2]. These tools cut leakage. But when a right depends on a device, the system can quietly shut out the very worker it is meant to serve.

Transparency gains

• Fixing MGNREGA's leakages: the government cited works not found on the ground, spending that did not match progress, and digital attendance being bypassed [2]. Now geo-tagging and electronic Measurement Books link payment to verified work [1].
• Identity and payment: face-authenticated attendance, 15.17 crore Gramin Rozgar Guarantee Cards and 3.76 crore DBT transactions reduce ghost workers and middlemen [1].
• Central worker register: it shows who worked and how often. South Africa's EPWP had no such register [4].
• Early warning: AI monitoring and real-time dashboards flag irregularities [2].

Exclusion risks

• Unrecorded demand: the Economic Survey 2023-24 found that where State capacity is weak, demand for work is not registered in real time [3]. If a request never enters the system, the 15-day unemployment-allowance clock never starts. Only about 8% of the allowance owed was paid between 2019-20 and 2024-25 [3].
• Authentication failure: worn fingerprints, ageing faces and patchy rural connectivity can block attendance or wages for genuine workers. On a dashboard this shows up as "no demand", not as a denial.
• Thin frontline staff: on average, one Panchayat Secretary serves 17 Gram Panchayats [3]. Few people are available to fix failed matches or help workers who cannot use the app.
• Screen replacing Sabha: only 63% of Gram Panchayats held even one social audit in 2025-26 [3]. Dashboards cannot replace the Gram Sabha checking records against the ground.

Verdict Technology has clearly made VB-G RAM G more transparent. The claim that it risks exclusion also holds, because the Act has few offline safeguards.

Verification should protect the right to work (Article 41), not ration it. The way forward is to:

• log every demand with a time-stamp, so the allowance is triggered automatically;
• allow an offline override when authentication fails;
• spend part of the higher 9% administrative cap [2] on panchayat staff and social audit units.

With these safeguards, digital verification can deliver both transparency and inclusion.