NEW DELHI: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday launched a sharp attack on the Modi government a day after Parliament cleared the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Bill, calling it “anti-state and anti-village by design” and accusing the Center of dismantling the core of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). In a post on “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,” he wrote, adding that “it is anti-state and anti-village by design”.Rahul said MGNREGA had fundamentally shifted power in rural India by giving workers genuine bargaining leverage. “With real options, exploitation and distress migration fell, wages increased, working conditions improved, all while building and reviving rural infrastructure,” he said. According to him, that leverage was precisely what the government now wanted to weaken. “By capping work and building in more ways to deny it, VB–G RAM G weakens the one instrument which the rural poor had.”Pointing to the Covid-19 crisis, Gandhi said the original scheme proved its value when livelihoods collapsed. “When the economy shut down and livelihoods collapsed, it kept crores from falling into hunger and debt,” he wrote, noting that women had consistently accounted for more than half of all person-days under MGNREGA. He warned that rationing employment would hit the most vulnerable first. “When you ration a jobs programme, it is women, Dalits, Adivasis, landless workers and the poorest OBC communities who get pushed out first.,
