‘From Right to Relief? MGNREGA Under Fire’

For millions of rural Indians, MGNREGA was not just a government scheme, it was dignity, survival and the promise of work close to home. On Saturday, Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi said that promise has been “bulldozed” by the Modi government through the newly passed VB-G RAM G Bill at winter session of Parliament, warning that the move strikes at the very foundation of rural livelihood security.

In a video message, Gandhi recalled how the employment guarantee law, passed two decades ago during Dr Manmohan Singh’s tenure, transformed village life by stopping distress migration and empowering gram panchayats. “For the poorest of the poor, it meant food on the table and work with dignity,” she quoted, invoking Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of Gram Swaraj that shaped the original law.

Gandhi accused the Centre of systematically weakening MGNREGA over the past 11 years, despite its critical role during the COVID crisis when millions depended on it for survival. She said the latest law goes a step further by removing Mahatma Gandhi’s name and restructuring the scheme without debate or consultation, centralising decisions on employment in Delhi, far removed from village realities.

“What was once a legal right decided at the local level will now be controlled by those who have never stood in a ration line or worked under the open sun,” Gandhi said, framing the issue through the eyes of the rural worker. Calling the law an attack on farmers, labourers and landless families, she vowed resistance. “Twenty years ago, we fought to secure the right to work. Today, we will fight again,” she said, asserting that lakhs of Congress workers stand with the rural poor.