MNREGA: Is India's landmark rural jobs guarantee scheme under threat from G RAM G?

India’s rural jobs guarantee, a global model, faces controversy as a new law reshapes the original scheme.

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Launched in 2005 by a Congress party government, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) entitled every rural household to demand up to 100 days of paid manual work each year at a statutory minimum wage.

This mattered in a country where 65% of 1.4 billion people live in rural areas and nearly half rely on farming, which generates insufficient income, accounting for just 16% of India's GDP.

Providing unskilled public work across all but fully urban districts, the scheme has become a backbone of rural livelihoods, cushioning demand during economic shocks. It is also among the world's most studied anti-poverty programmes, with strong equity: over half of the estimated 126 million scheme workers are women, and around 40% come from "scheduled castes" or tribes, among the most deprived Indians

The ruling Narendra Modi government, initially critical and later inclined to pare it back, turned to the scheme in crises - most notably during the Covid pandemic, when mass return migration from cities to villages sharply drove up demand for work. Economists say the scheme lifted rural consumption, reduced poverty, improved school attendance, and in some regions pushed up private-sector wages.