Sonia Gandhi: MGNREGA’s demolition would have disastrous effects, according to

Sonia Gandhi:  the chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party, said Monday that the “demolition” of the historic Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) will have disastrous effects on crores of people in rural India. She urged everyone to stand together and defend the rights that protect everyone.

The former head of the Congress said that the “death” of MGNREGA was a result of a collective failure in an editorial headed “The bulldozed demolition of MGNREGA” that appeared in “The Hindu.”

The Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Bill, which replaces the MGNREGA and provides 125 days of paid employment for rural laborers, was signed into law by President Droupadi Murmu the day before.

“MGNREGA realised the Mahatma’s vision of Sarvodaya (welfare of all) and enacted the constitutional right to work,” asserted Gandhi. “It is imperative, now more than ever, to unite and safeguard the rights that protect us all,” she said.

Gandhi said that the job guarantee program had been “bulldozed and demolished” in order to alleviate rural hardship.

According to her, MGNREGA was a rights-based law that was motivated by Article 41 of the Indian Constitution, which requires the government to protect people’ freedom to work.

“Without any debate, deliberation, or regard for legislative procedures or Center-State ties, the Narendra Modi administration has been working to smash MGNREGA’s repeal over the last several days.

The elimination of the Mahatma’s name was only the beginning. “MGNREGA’s very structure, which is so essential to its impact, has been destroyed,” she said.

“Nothing but a set of bureaucratic provisions” is how she characterized VB-G RAM G.

Gandhi said that the Modi government’s new bill has limited the program’s scope to rural regions, as announced by the Union at its discretion.

The number of employment days offered in each state is now regulated by a predetermined financial allocation, as opposed to an unconstrained central allotment.

She said that the all-year employment guarantee has been completed and that the amount of workdays offered is consequently determined by the Center’s priorities rather than the requirements of the people.

Gandhi said that one of the biggest effects of MGNREGA was that it gave the poor without land in rural India more negotiating power, which raised agricultural wages.

“The new legislation will undoubtedly weaken this negotiating strength.

Contrary to what should have happened, the Modi administration is trying to stifle wage growth, she said, especially at a time when the share of jobs in agriculture has increased for the first time since Independence.

She said that the Modi administration is discouraging the states from contributing to the program by shifting a large amount of the cost to them.

The head of Congress claimed that states’ already dire financial situation will be further ruined.

The VB-G RAM G Bill calls for 60:40 cost-sharing between the federal government and the states, 90:10 for states in the northeast and the Himalayas, and 100% central financing for Union territories without legislatures.

Gandhi said that in addition to eliminating the program’s demand-based structure, the Modi administration has terminated the scheme’s decentralized structure.

“The Modi administration is making false claims that it has extended the MGNREGA-mandated job guarantee from 100 to 125 days.

That won’t be the case for all the reasons mentioned above.

Indeed, the Modi government’s ten-year history of stifling MGNREGA reveals the true nature of its aims.

“It began with the Prime Minister’s (in)famous mocking of the scheme on the floor of the House and proceeded apace through a ‘death by a thousand cuts’ strategy through, for instance, stagnant budgets, the use of disenfranchising technology and delayed payments to workers,” she said in the essay.

Gandhi said that the denial of the right to labor should not be seen as a stand-alone act, but rather as a component of the governing establishment’s ongoing attack on the Constitution and its right-based national vision.

“Voting, the most basic right, is being attacked in a way never seen before.

Legislative measures that undermine the independence of Information Commissioners and broad exclusions from the Act for vague “personal information data” have desecrated the right to information, she said.

The Congress leader claimed that the Forest (Conservation) Rules (2022) had disqualified the gram sabha from allowing the diversion of forest land, thereby undermining the right to education and significantly weakening the Forest Rights Act, 2006, as well as the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013.

“The government tried to deny farmers the right to a minimum support price by enacting the three black farm laws.

Gandhi said that the National Food Security Act of 2013 may be the next to go.