The campaign against the new rural employment guarantee legislation, The Viksit Bharat- Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Bill, 2025, will be decentralised, unlike the 13-month-long farmers’ agitation, which was stationed at Delhi’s border.
The first round of protests will be held on Republic Day across the country. It is one of the four days in a year that gram panchayats have to be mandatorily held. NREGA Sangharsh Morcha, a coalition of NGOs and unions working with MGNREGA workers, has given a call to ensure that during this meeting, the gram panchayats move a resolution against the new legislation.
“The new legislation has diluting powers of gram panchayats in many ways, including having a say in what work should be done and where. The new law makes the rural employment programme like any other centrally sponsored scheme where decisions are top down,” Nikhil Dey, one of the founding architects of MGNREGA and founder member of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, told The Hindu.
Congress launches 45-day ‘MGNREGA Bachao Sangram’ against new rural jobs legislation
The government has been using the gram sabha platform to familarise the workers with the new Act. Three days after the legislation was passed in Parliament, the Ministry of Rural Development had directed all State governments to conduct special gram sabhas in every gram panchayat by December 26 last year to discuss the salient features of the Act.
