“Anti-state, Anti-village by design,” Rahul Gandhi slams government on VB-G RAM G bill

On Friday, an united Opposition staged protest outside Parliament against the passage of the bills while the members of the Trinamool Congress continued their protest on the footsteps of the entry to the House.

Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi, who is currently in Germany, joined the chorus of voices against the bill and claimed that it was “anti-state” and “anti-village” by design.

“Last night, the Modi government demolished twenty years of MGNREGA in one day. VB-G RAM G isn’t a “revamp” of MGNREGA. It demolishes the rights-based, demand-driven guarantee and turns it into a rationed scheme which is controlled from Delhi. It is anti-state and anti-village by design.

MGNREGA gave the rural worker bargaining power. With real options, exploitation and distress migration fell, wages increased, working conditions improved, all while building and reviving rural infrastructure. That leverage is precisely what this government wants to break. By capping work and building in more ways to deny it, VB-G RAM G weakens the one instrument which the rural poor had,” The Congress leader wrote in a post on X.

“We saw what MGNREGA meant during COVID. When the economy shut down and livelihoods collapsed, it kept crores from falling into hunger and debt. And it helped women the most – year after year, women have contributed more than half the person-days. When you ration a jobs programme, it is women, Dalits, Adivasis, landless workers and the poorest OBC communities who get pushed out first. To top it all, this law was bulldozed through Parliament without proper scrutiny. The opposition demand to send the bill to a Standing Committee was rejected. A law that rewires the rural social contract, affecting crores of workers should never be rammed through without serious committee scrutiny, expert consultation, and public hearings. PM Modi’s targets are clear: weaken labour, weaken the leverage of rural India, especially Dalits, OBCs and Adivasis, centralise power, and then sell slogans as “reform”,” he added.

“MGNREGA is among the most successful poverty alleviation and empowerment programmes in the world. We will not let this government destroy the rural poor’s last line of defence. We will stand with workers, panchayats, and states to defeat this move and build a nationwide front to ensure this law is withdrawn,” he further stated.

Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi also took on the government saying that the scheme would now die and that would be harmful.

“This Bill is going to be very harmful for the poorest of the poor because the original MGNREGA scheme, the way it was structured – where the Centre paid 90% of the funds for it, was the backbone of the rural economy and the greatest support for the people who are very poor and had difficulty getting employment. For 20 years, this has been one of the good schemes which has run and helped poor people, especially those who have nothing. Now, in this new form of the Bill, when you cut down so much of the allocation from the funds from the Centre, the States are not going to be able to afford it. It means that the scheme will die and that is going to be very harmful,” she said.

On December 18, the penultimate day of its Winter Session 2025, the Parliament passed the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Bill, with the Rajya Sabha approving the legislation after it received the Lok Sabha’s nod.

The Bill guarantees 125 days of wage employment per rural household, up from the existing 100 days, for adult members willing to undertake unskilled manual work.

As per Section 22 of the Bill, the fund-sharing pattern between the Central Government and the State Governments will be 60:40, while for the North Eastern States, Himalayan States, and Union Territories (Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir), it will be 90:10. (ANI)