India's Rural Employment Safety Net Overhauled with Viksit Bharat—Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act

Guwahati:PresidentDroupadi Murmuhas approved the Viksit Bharat—Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Bill, 2025, bringing into force a sweeping overhaul of India’s rural employment safety net and clearing the path for a new statutory regime.With the President’s assent, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, in operation for nearly twenty years, stands formally repealed. The new law replaces it with a framework aligned to the Union government’s Viksit Bharat 2047 roadmap, signalling a decisive shift in the design and objectives of rural employment policy.At the core of the legislation is an expansion of the legal employment guarantee. The entitlement for rural households has been raised from 100 to 125 days in a financial year. The government has maintained that this change strengthens workers’ rights, arguing that the earlier 100-day limit often operated as a ceiling rather than a true minimum guarantee.The Act also redraws the programme’s financial structure. Moving away from MGNREGA’s model—under which the Centre bore the full wage cost—the new framework introduces shared fiscal responsibility between the Centre and states. Funding will now follow a uniform 60:40 Centre–State ratio nationwide. This replaces the earlier differentiated formulas, including the 90:10 pattern for northeastern and Himalayan states and the 75:25 split elsewhere. According to the government, a common funding ratio will promote cooperative federalism and push states to take greater ownership of implementation and outcomes.Another key provision allows authorities to pause employment generation for up to 60 days during peak agricultural sowing and harvesting periods. The government has said this flexibility addresses long-standing complaints from farmers about labour shortages at critical stages of the farming cycle, while still preserving the overall employment guarantee.The VB-G RAM G Act tightens the scope of permissible work and confines employment to four defined sectors: water security, core rural infrastructure, livelihood-oriented assets, and climate resilience.Officials have stated that concentrating resources in these areas will improve asset quality, durability, and long-term economic value.Taken together, the enactment of the VB-G RAM G Act represents one of the most consequential changes to India’s social welfare legislation in recent years, with far-reaching implications for rural livelihoods, state finances, and Centre–State relations.Related