The VB-G RAM G Act, 2025 promises modernisation of rural employment but critics argue it undermines the demand-driven legal guarantee of MGNREGA. Critically examine.

The Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025, which replaced MGNREGA on its commencement from 1 July 2026 [2], is the biggest recast of rural employment law since 2005. It expands the guarantee's scale and purpose, but its funding and design shifts weaken the entitlement's demand-driven character.

The modernisation promise

• Wider guarantee: the statutory entitlement rises from 100 to 125 days per rural household a year, with the unemployment allowance provision retained [1].
• Asset-led focus: works are organised around water security, rural and livelihood infrastructure, and extreme-weather resilience — groundwater recharge, cold chains, cyclone shelters — linking wages to durable rural capital rather than open-ended earthwork [2].
• Fiscal scale: the Centre's share for 2026-27 is ₹95,692 crore, with total outlay expected above ₹1.51 lakh crore [2].
• Digital governance: new Gramin Rozgar Guarantee Cards replace paper-era muster rolls, with e-KYC job cards valid during transition [2], aligning delivery with Viksit Bharat 2047 [3].

Why critics see dilution

• Cost-sharing risk: funding moves to a 60:40 Centre-State ratio, with states bearing expenditure above a normative allocation [1]. A normative ceiling sits uneasily with a demand-driven right — fiscally weak, high-demand states like Bihar and Odisha may ration work rather than fund it.
• Entitlement vs. programme: MGNREGA's strength was automatic triggering — work within 15 days or allowance. Where states face the marginal cost, the practical enforceability of that trigger weakens even though it survives in the text [1].
• Narrowed self-selection: a domain-specified works list can reduce the local, on-demand absorption of distress labour that made the earlier law counter-cyclical.
• Rights framing: the right-to-work reading of Article 21 read with Articles 39(a) and 41 requires justiciability, not discretion.

The Act's higher guarantee and asset orientation are genuine gains; the risk lies in financing, not intent. Protecting the demand-driven core through assured central backstop funding for high-demand states, transparent time-bound allowance payment, and independent social audits would let modernisation strengthen rather than substitute the right to work.