Members of TARATDAC wearing black dress protest against implementation of VB-G RAM G in Madurai on Wednesday.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Members of the Tamil Nadu Association for the Rights of All Types of Differently Abled and Caregivers (TARATDAC) observing the day of implementation of Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) on July 1, 2026 as ‘black day,’ staged a protest outside Collectorate here on Wednesday.Protesters in black dresses staged a demonstration and blocked the road.As the scheme replacing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) is operational from July 1, 2026, the forum claimed it as against the rights of the rural population, especially the differently abled people.A.Balamurugan, TARATDAC district secretary, said, “The surreptitious manner of its introduction, without any wider public debate or consultation, clearly exposes the Modi regime’s intent to dismantle the existing framework of guaranteed employment and destroy the statutory right to guaranteed work enshrined in the MGNREGA.He added that VB-G RAM G, sugar-coated under the guise of Viksit Bharat, strikes at the very foundation of MGNREGA by removing its statutory and universal guarantee.“Under MGNREGA, every person willing to do unskilled manual work in any rural area must be provided employment. By diluting this universal guarantee, the VB-G RAM G makes employment dependent on the discretionary powers of the union government, which will notify such rural areas for State government to provide work,” he added.Mr. Balamurugan noted that an equally alarming and unjust feature of it was the systematic transfer of the financial burden onto the States, while the union government arrogates all decision-making powers to itself without any accountability.“Under the State-wise normative allocation policy proposed in VB-G RAM G, the Union government will have an arbitrary authority to determine fund allocations for the States,” he said.Further, he stated, from the earlier 90:10 ratio between the Centre and the States under MGNREGA, the union government has now reduced its responsibility to 60 percent.The States will be forced to bear 40 percent of the burden, in addition to 100 percent of any expenditure above the normative allocation.The new rural employment scheme could severely impact differently abled people and many of whom rely heavily on the MGNREGA for their livelihoods, he said.“The intake of the workers into the scheme which has various new regulations systematically rejects opportunities of the differently abled people,” he claimed. Published - July 01, 2026 09:51 pm IST
