The VB-G RAM G Act, 2025 represents a structural evolution rather than a mere replacement of MGNREGA. Critically examine the continuities and departures in the new scheme with reference to employment guarantee, asset creation, and federalism.

The Viksit Bharat—Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission Gramin (VB-G RAM G) Act, 2025, operational from 1 July 2026, supersedes MGNREGA, 2005 while retaining its legal core — a demand-driven guarantee of unskilled manual work for rural households [3]. The shift is thus one of redesign, not abandonment.

Employment guarantee: deepened entitlement, narrowed window

• Continuity: the right to demand work survives, as does the unemployment allowance where work is not provided, with wages payable weekly or within a fortnight [1][3].
• Departure: the entitlement rises from 100 to 125 days per rural household per financial year, raising the rural income floor [2].
• Critical view: an aggregated 60-day no-work period, designed to release labour for peak sowing and harvest, compresses the period in which the additional days can actually be claimed [3].

Asset creation: from isolated earthworks to planned infrastructure

• Continuity: Gram Panchayats continue to identify and shelf works, preserving the Article 243G planning role [1].
• Departure: works are channelled into four domains — water security, rural infrastructure, livelihood infrastructure and extreme-weather mitigation — and aligned with PM Gati Shakti and a national rural infrastructure stack [1].
• Critical view: such convergence risks tilting a wage-employment programme toward supply-driven asset targets, where labour becomes an input rather than the objective.

Federalism: cooperative in form, conditional in substance

• Departure: wage costs, earlier borne almost wholly by the Centre, now follow 60:40 sharing (90:10 for North-Eastern and Himalayan states); states additionally bear unemployment allowance and delay compensation [1].
• The Centre fixes normative allocations and states meet any excess expenditure — a hard budget ceiling on an open-ended guarantee [1].
• Continuity: central finance remains dominant, with ₹95,692 crore provided for FY 2026-27 [4]; the administrative cap raised to 9% funds staffing and monitoring [2].

Enlarging the entitlement while embedding it in planned infrastructure and shared financing marks genuine structural evolution, though fiscal conditionality could dilute its automaticity. Transparent allocation formulae, timely releases and a strong social-audit architecture would let the Act carry forward Article 41's promise of the right to work into Viksit Bharat @2047.