The dismantling of the world’s largest demand-based employment guarantee scheme, MNREGA, marks a shift from rights-based welfare programmes that value dignity of labour and responsibility of the state in providing employment to right-wing welfare schemes that invoke arbitrary discrimination and rest on feudal benevolence. The Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) or the VB-G RAM G Act once again pushes the rural poor to depend on Ram-bharose instead of right to work as a democratic right that not only empowered them economically but also increased their bargaining power vis-à-vis the land-owning class. The withdrawal of MNREGA would increase the rural reserve army of labour that is likely to push down wages and rural incomes offering ease of exploitation to the rural rich who would have greater control over the labour market. As several studies have pointed out, MNREGA has not only increased incomes of the rural poor but ascertained a rural reservation wage or a floor wage and increased employment in rural India.

It is also well-documented that the greater gain of MNREGA came from indirect increase in income due to the tightening of the labour market caused by the programme rather than the direct gains of wages against work. For the past few years, we saw a deliberate attempt by the central government to reduce allocation for MNREGA and the final assault came without any discussion in Parliament. Also, for the past few years, there had been reports of misuse of funds and corruption in this project and such evidence helped diluting the importance of this project in public perception. This is despite the fact that empirical evidence of leakage in this large-scale programme was minimal and many state governments were introducing digital modes of payments to check leakages, significantly increasing the efficiency of the programme. However, instead of increasing the scope of the programme, the central government chose to withdraw it. Large scale corruption in many government projects and kickbacks from their cronies are generally ignored in India because they fulfil mutual interests of the rich and the powerful. And for such evidence we hardly see factories or businesses being closed. On the other hand, on issues of rights of the poor, corruption has always been blown out of proportion to destroy any existing right that creates hindrance to freedom of exploitation of labour.

Multiprong Attack

The withdrawal of MNREGA is a multiprong attack on the rural poor who will be losing their right to work, will be forced to accept lower wages, face discrimination by caste and gender in terms of employment and wages and will be subject to feudal political and economic power to be negotiated through pre-modern loyalty. It also increases the responsibility of states in operating the rural employment programme and since most states would not have adequate funds, the scope of the supply driven employment scheme is bound to shrink. This essentially destroys the world’s largest demand driven work programme and relieves both the central and state governments from the legal binding of job creation of at least hundred days for the rural poor. Moreover, the clause of prior notification of areas by the central government in which the new work programme would be operational is simply turning a welfare scheme into a tool of political control by the ruling party at the centre.

Destruction of rights of the working poor is a way of making them subject to discretion extended by the powerful. Disenfranchising right to work would blow up the rural reserve army of labour reducing their bargaining power vis-a-vis rural the employer class be it landlords, contractors, service providers or well-to-do rural households who would find cheap labour for their domestic work. This is going to increase migration to peri-urban and urban areas resulting in an expansion of the informal sector in non-agriculture. This will increase the rate of exploitation in urban low skill segments as migrants hardly have voice where they are politically and culturally out of place. Right to work through MNREGA was a matter of ensuring dignity of work independent of caste and gender and acknowledging the importance of decentralised decision making in building assets according to local needs. Once it is withdrawn, it brings back the evils of ascribed identities and hierarchies that comes into play by the revitalised feudal dominance in rural India. Retrogression of rights does not bring the matrix of power to the situation prior to implementation of right, in fact, it usually becomes worse than that, much more regressive as it celebrates the defeat of the powerless and reasserts the social norm that the destiny of the poor lies in the hands of the rich and powerful. This makes regrouping of the exploited and oppressed even more difficult. It is an assault on the class power of the rural poor.

Against Work Related Rights

Right-wing governments favour extending support based on discretion rather than on rights. Particularly for the state, acknowledging responsibilities of job creation as a mode of intervention to manage demand is inimical to neoliberal right-wing governments. Most importantly, MNREGA was a combination of several things, namely, decentralised decision making, expansion of rights for the rural poor and state becoming answerable to the poorest of rural India who demanded work. This new VB-G RAM G Act knocks down all at one go. It is important to note that most of the right-wing governments across the world and in India including some state governments have taken resort to a new breed of social welfare schemes, mostly delinked from work, of cash transfer to various segments of the population.

There is a general pattern in the reforms undertaken by neoliberal governments related to labour working in the factories as well as for other sections of the working poor. The general rule is dislodging all protective rights and existing institutional bargaining mechanisms of the working people related to their work, disempowering them by weakening class identities that naturally grow in their workplace due to shared experience of exploitation. This ensures absolute freedom of capital to exploit workers in their workplace. On the other hand, the state extends some minimalist relief through transfer of cash or kind to different segments of the poor identified not as workers but citizens of different categories such as women, girl child, forest dwellers, students from underprivileged background and so on. Such support marginally reduces the cost of living for the beneficiaries. And the right-wing governments often prefer such support to work related rights for the following reasons: First, this support although financed by the government revenue earned through direct and indirect taxes in which the poor also contributes, bears a taste of favour to specific beneficiary groups vis-à-vis others. Studies show that such sense of gratitude usually brings higher political pay-offs than universal rights. Second, if the support is unrelated to work, not only the transfer is seen as a favour rather than a claim but also withdrawal of such support or reducing the scope or extent of real benefit would not create much political backlash as already individualised beneficiaries may be managed through some other benefit or at least through hopes of new benefits. Third, any demand related to work whether in terms of wages or working conditions attains social legitimacy because it is a demand for higher share on the social product in which the workers have contributed. On the other hand, any transfer from the government which is not related to work doesn’t get social traction because it seen as a demand unrelated to any contribution to the social product, hence, can be easily ignored. The grand scheme is to subvert class formation and mobilisation at the workplace and displace the discontent by some minimalist transfers which help individuate the working people as dependent citizens without any claim. In the new employment scheme in which states or regions employment schemes will be operational, who will get the jobs and for what kind of work--all would be dependent on the discretion of the central government and would rest on the same patron-client relation where rights of workers will be replaced by ‘favours’ without a claim!