The VB-G RAM G scheme represents a paradigm shift from employment guarantee to livelihood guarantee. Critically examine its design features and potential to address structural rural unemployment.

The Viksit Bharat–Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025, in force from 1 July 2026, repeals MGNREGA (2005) and reframes rural work from bare wage relief towards asset-creation and livelihoods [1]. Its design marks a genuine shift, though the livelihood promise remains conditional on execution.

Design features signalling the shift

• Wider guarantee: statutory entitlement raised from 100 to 125 days per rural household, with unemployment allowance if work is not given within 15 days [1].
• Thematic works planning around four pillars — water security, core rural infrastructure, livelihood enhancement, and climate and disaster resilience — integrated with the PM Gati Shakti master plan, moving beyond unskilled earthwork [1].
• Fiscal recasting as a centrally sponsored scheme on 60:40 sharing (90:10 for Himalayan and North-Eastern States), with a record central outlay of about ₹95,692 crore for 2026-27 [2].
• Accountability tech: biometric authentication, geospatial monitoring and weekly public disclosure to curb fake job cards and wage delays [1].
• Targeted inclusion of PVTGs, single women, persons with disabilities, released bonded labourers and transgender persons [3].

Critical assessment of its potential

• The scheme remains a demand-driven, unskilled-work programme; without skilling and non-farm enterprise linkages, "livelihood" risks staying nominal.
• The provision allowing States to notify up to 60 days annually when works are suspended during sowing and harvesting can blunt the guarantee precisely in lean distress spells [1].
• 60:40 co-financing shifts a larger burden onto fiscally weaker States, risking uneven rollout and delayed wages.
• Structural rural unemployment stems from low farm productivity and weak manufacturing absorption; a public works law can cushion, not cure, it.

VB-G RAM G is best read as an evolution — a self-selecting safety net upgraded into a durable-asset and climate-resilience instrument. Its success will hinge on timely wage payment, State fiscal capacity, and convergence with DAY-NRLM skilling, so that the promised livelihood guarantee genuinely advances the Viksit Bharat 2047 goal of inclusive rural prosperity.