NEW DELHI: Leader of opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi launched a sharp attack on the Modi government after Parliament passed the VB–G RAM G Bill, accusing it of dismantling the core principles of the 20-year-old MGNREGA and weakening rural workers’ rights.In a post on X, Rahul Gandhi wrote, “Last night, the Modi government demolished twenty years of MGNREGA in one day,” arguing that the new law was not a reform but a rollback. “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. It is anti-state and anti-village by design,” he said.Rahul said MGNREGA had given rural workers bargaining power, reduced exploitation and distress migration, raised wages, and improved working conditions while building rural infrastructure. “That leverage is precisely what this government wants to break,” he wrote, warning that capping work and creating new denial mechanisms would weaken “the one instrument which the rural poor had”.He pointed to the scheme’s role during the Covid lockdowns, saying it prevented crores from falling into hunger and debt and benefited women the most. “When you ration a jobs programme, it is women, Dalits, Adivasis, landless workers and the poorest OBC communities who get pushed out first,” he said.Gandhi also criticised the passage of the Bill without committee scrutiny, calling it a law that “rewires the rural social contract”. “We will not let this government destroy the rural poor’s last line of defence,” he added, pledging nationwide opposition to the move.
