The President’s assent to the Viksit Bharat — Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025 marks the most significant restructuring of India’s statutory rural employment framework since the original employment guarantee law. By expanding the legal entitlement from 100 to 125 days and embedding employment within a broader livelihood and asset-creation strategy, the Act seeks to respond to long-standing gaps between legal promise and on-ground outcomes. Yet, the reform has also triggered criticism, much of which stems from a fundamental misreading of its design and intent.
Why the new law has triggered controversy
Critics argue that the Act weakens the employment guarantee, undermines decentralisation, dilutes demand-based rights, and signals a fiscal retreat by the Union government. These claims, however, rest on an assumption that welfare and development are opposing choices. The new framework rejects this binary. It treats income support, durable asset creation, agricultural stability, and long-term rural productivity as part of a single continuum. Welfare is no longer seen as temporary relief alone, but as a pathway to development.
Has the legal right to work been diluted?
The claim that the statutory right to employment has been weakened does not hold up to scrutiny. The Act retains the justiciable character of the employment guarantee and strengthens its enforceability. The entitlement has been expanded from 100 to 125 days, not curtailed. Importantly, procedural clauses that earlier rendered unemployment allowance ineffective in practice have been removed. Time-bound grievance redress mechanisms have also been reinforced, directly addressing the gap between what the law promised and what workers actually received.
Demand-based employment versus advance planning
Another criticism is that demand-driven employment has been replaced by top-down planning. This rests on a false opposition. Demand for work continues to originate from workers themselves. What changes is the timing and preparedness of the system. Under the new framework, employment is planned in advance through participatory village-level processes so that when workers demand work, it is available. Planning here does not suppress demand; it operationalises it by preventing denial of work due to administrative unpreparedness.
Decentralisation: weakened or made meaningful?
The charge of centralisation overlooks the law’s institutional architecture. Gram panchayats remain the primary planning and implementing authorities, while gram sabhas continue to approve local plans. What has changed is that decentralised planning is no longer episodic or ad hoc. Viksit Gram Panchayat Plans are systematically prepared and then aggregated at block, district, State, and national levels. This aggregation is meant to enable convergence and coordination across sectors, not to override local priorities. Decision-making remains local; what is centralised is coherence.
Consultation and cooperative federalism
Claims that the reform was pushed through without consultation are inconsistent with the legislative record. The Bill was preceded by consultations with State governments, technical workshops, and multi-stakeholder discussions. Core design elements — including village planning structures, convergence mechanisms, and digital governance systems — reflect feedback from States and lessons drawn from years of implementation experience. States are treated not as mere implementing agencies but as partners, with the freedom to notify and operationalise schemes within the statutory framework.
Funding patterns and the question of fiscal withdrawal
The idea that the Act represents fiscal abdication is contradicted by allocation trends. Budgetary allocations for rural employment rose from ₹33,000 crore in 2013–14 to ₹86,000 crore in 2024–25, with the Centre’s contribution now set to increase further to nearly ₹95,000 crore. Person-days generated more than doubled over this period, and women’s participation rose from 48% to nearly 57%.
The familiar 60:40 Centre–State funding pattern has been retained, with a 90:10 ratio for northeastern and Himalayan States and for Jammu and Kashmir. This reflects continuity with the structure of centrally sponsored schemes rather than withdrawal. Equity is ensured through rule-based, normative allocation, while flexibility is preserved for States to seek relaxations during natural disasters or extraordinary circumstances.
Correcting structural weaknesses of the old framework
Implementation experience revealed persistent weaknesses in the earlier employment guarantee framework: episodic availability of work, weak enforceability of unemployment allowance, fragmented asset creation, and scope for duplication and ghost entries. These problems became particularly visible during droughts, migration spikes, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The new Act seeks to correct these structural flaws by integrating planning, convergence, and accountability into the statutory design rather than treating them as administrative add-ons.
The contrasting legacy of the UPA period
Debates around the reform also revive scrutiny of the United Progressive Alliance’s record on rural employment. While the original law promised 100 days of work at a real wage, wages were capped early and remained frozen for years despite inflation. Allocations declined in the UPA’s second term, and official data showed falling worker participation. A 2013 audit by the documented widespread irregularities, including fake job cards, delayed wage payments, and underutilisation of funds in some of the poorest States. These shortcomings exposed a disconnect between legislative intent and administrative capacity.
Balancing welfare with development
Framing the debate as a choice between welfare and development creates a false dichotomy. Guaranteed livelihoods without productive assets risk becoming transient relief, while infrastructure creation without income support excludes the poorest. The new Act attempts to integrate both objectives within a single statutory framework. It preserves the legal right to work, expands entitlements, strengthens worker protections, and aligns employment with long-term rural productivity.
What to note for Prelims?
- Statutory employment guarantee enhanced from 100 to 125 days.
- Removal of procedural barriers that weakened unemployment allowance.
- Retention of gram panchayats and gram sabhas as core planning authorities.
- Continuation of 60:40 Centre–State funding pattern, with special ratios for hill and northeastern States.
What to note for Mains?
- Critically examine the welfare–development dichotomy in rural policy.
- Analyse how advance planning can strengthen demand-based rights.
- Discuss cooperative federalism in the context of centrally sponsored schemes.
- Evaluate how statutory design can bridge gaps between legal guarantees and implementation outcomes.
