MGNREGA recast: The Union government’s proposal to replace the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act with the Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) warrants close scrutiny. The headline change—raising guaranteed workdays from 100 to 120—reads as an expansion at a time of rural distress and elevated food and fuel prices. For landless labourers, women workers, and marginal farmers, wage employment has functioned less as a supplement than as a floor. More days could strengthen that floor, provided the core guarantees remain intact.
That proviso matters. The reported restructuring of fiscal responsibility does not. Indications that states’ share could rise from about 10% to nearly 40% of total expenditure shift risk onto governments already carrying arrears and payment backlogs. The consequence is predictable: uneven capacity across states to generate work and pay on time. Social protection programmes of national importance have rested on Union financing precisely to avoid such regional divergence.
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Demand-driven design under strain
More troubling is the move from a demand-driven statute to a supply-driven “mission” architecture. The scheme’s defining feature has been the legal right to work on demand, with compensation for failure. A mission framework weakens that entitlement by discretion. Accountability thins. Workers’ bargaining power against local administrations erodes. What was enforceable risks becoming contingent.
Less examined is administrative capacity at the local level. A mission framework assumes planning depth, technical staff, and execution discipline at the panchayat and block levels that many states do not possess. MGNREGA’s demand-led design compensated for weak capacity by obligating work provision when households applied.
Replacing that obligation with administrative selection shifts power from workers to implementing authorities and risks favouring projects that are easier to sanction rather than those aligned with local labour needs or durable asset creation. The consequence is not only uneven employment generation but a weakening of the programme’s role as a wage floor and counter-cyclical stabiliser in rural labour markets, even if the nominal number of workdays is raised.
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Wage delays and payment discipline
The extension to 120 days also fails if wages arrive late. Delayed payments have been chronic, pushing workers to high-cost borrowing or exit. Without ring-fenced funds, strict timelines, and automatic compensation for delays, additional days remain notional. Payment discipline is not an implementation detail; it is the scheme.
The extension to 120 days also fails if wages arrive late. Delayed payments have been chronic, despite statutory timelines and repeated directives from the Ministry of Rural Development. The growing reliance on the National Electronic Fund Management System has centralised control without eliminating bottlenecks, as fund releases remain contingent on approvals and data validation. Workers bear the cost of these frictions. Without automatic compensation, predictable fund flow, and enforceable timelines, additional workdays offer arithmetic expansion without economic security.
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Transparency, technology, and exclusion
Transparency remains uneven. Muster rolls, work measurement, and wage calculation require clarity to prevent exclusion and leakage. Digital tools have improved monitoring but have also produced new barriers for workers without access or literacy. Oversight cannot substitute for accessibility. Any redesign must recognise that trade-off rather than assume it away.
An expanded work guarantee, in principle, offers relief. In practice, higher state burdens, a diluted demand-driven core, and unresolved wage and transparency failures risk weakening one of India’s most consequential social protections. Reform should reinforce the rights-based framework and federal responsibility that made the program work. Renaming and missions do not compensate for the loss of enforceable guarantees.
Dr Shamna TC is Assistant Professor of Economics at Christ University, Bengaluru. She holds a PhD from the Central University of Kerala and an ICSSR Post-Doctoral Fellowship, and leads a university-funded project on MGNREGA skill gaps in Kerala. Dr Anjali PK is Assistant Professor of Economics at Christ University, specialising in the socio-economic impact of technology, with interests in digitalisation, development, AI, and education.