SEVERAL employment schemes, each limited in scope and constrained by the availability of fiscal resources, had existed in different states of the country earlier; what the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme enacted in 2005 did was to introduce a uniform, nation-wide, essentially centrally-funded, demand-driven scheme: one person per rural household could get up to a hundred days of employment on demand, failing which the person demanding work would have to be compensated. A demand-driven scheme confers a right on the people; the MGNREGS therefore introduced a right. The Indian Constitution had put economic rights, including the right to work, not among the Fundamental Rights but among the Directive Principles of State Policy; MGNREGS represented an attempt to rectify this lacuna, and to realise, no doubt partially, a Constitutional vision.

The legislation underlying MGNREGS was discussed in public fora for months; it was deliberated upon by a Parliamentary Committee which gathered testimonies from lots of people; and finally, when a consensus had been built around its various provisions, it was passed unanimously in parliament. It thus constituted an embodiment of the nation’s will and realized for the people a right that the Constitution had envisaged. An abrogation of that right is ultra vires the Constitution, if not in letter, then certainly in spirit.

Yet, this is precisely what the NDA government has done. It has taken away a right of the people simply through passing a resolution in parliament by a voice vote. A Constitutionally-approved right of the people, which the entire nation had willed them to enjoy, has been abrogated by a mere voice vote in the parliament. This is an outrageous act. As if aware of the utter impropriety of what it was doing, the government resorted to a massive hush-hush. The proposed bill to replace the MGNREGA was introduced on the 15^th of December, discussed on the night of the 17^th and passed by voice vote on the 18^th, without being referred to the parliamentary standing committee on rural development, despite a written request by the Chairperson of that Committee, and without the permission being given to move any amendments to the bill. This introduces an astonishing and utterly undemocratic precedent: any right of the people, even when conferred in accordance with the will of the nation and the provisions of the Constitution, can be snatched away at any moment by a mere voice vote in parliament.

The government, in its characteristic fashion, has been working overtime to spread confusion about the contents of the new bill: it puts out that instead of a maximum of 100 days of employment as under the MGNREGS, now people can have up to 125 days of employment which makes the new bill superior to the MGNREGS. What it hides is that the new Act does not amount to MGNREGS plus 25 extra days of employment; it does away with MGNREGS altogether and hence the need to provide employment on demand. Instead of a demand-driven scheme, and hence a rights-based scheme, it now makes the provision of employment dependent upon the whim of the central government. This is done in many ways.

First, the provision of employment will henceforth be in specific regions designated by the central government, rather than in rural India as a whole. So the question of every rural household being entitled to 100 days of employment (let alone 125 days) does not arise. Second, the magnitude of funds made available to states by the central government will be determined by the latter, independent of how much demand for employment exists in any particular state. Third, the states have to provide 40 percent of the funds and the Centre 60 percent, compared to the situation under MGNREGS where the Centre provided 90 percent of funds, whose size moreover  was supposed to depend on the demand for employment. Hence if the Centre now feels that a state should get Rs. 60 of its funds, but the state, being fiscally stressed, as all states currently are, manages to provide only Rs. 20, not the needed Rs. 40, then the total size of the programme in that state would be Rs. 50, and not Rs. 100. This not only whittles down the programme, but provides the Centre with a convenient scapegoat: if employment is not being provided in accordance with what the people demand , then, it will argue, the reason lies with the states.

The maximum number of employment days being raised to 125 therefore means nothing: the new employment scheme is not demand-driven; it is supply-driven, and hence abrogates a right conferred on the people under the MGNREGS.

The NDA government’s assault on the Constitution is not confined to the abrogation of a right; it encompasses an assault on federalism too. Without consulting with the states, despite being fully aware of the fiscal constraints on state governments, the Centre has unilaterally, and completely out of the blue, raised the share of the contribution of states to the employment scheme to 40 percent from the current 10 percent. But that is not all: the size of the total expenditure in each state will be determined by the Centre; the regions where this expenditure is to be incurred will be determined by the Centre; the employment projects on which this expenditure is to be incurred will be determined by the Centre; and if a state government wishes to spend more than what the Centre has ordained it should, then it can do so only in accordance with norms determined by the Centre.

The states in other words are suddenly being called upon to spend more, but all the decisions about where and how they can spend will be determined by the Centre. This amounts to treating state governments as mere vassals of the Centre, a travesty of the federalism envisaged in the Constitution.

It is not just the states that are being trampled upon; the role of local self-governing institutions is being diminished too. The employment projects for MGNREGS that used to be planned by LSGIs are now going to be dictated by the Central government, which constitutes a further assault on the Constitutional vision of democratic decentralization enshrined in the 73^rd Constitutional Amendment.

The VB-G RAM G therefore is not only an attack on the rural poor, who constitute by far the poorest people in India; it also amounts to a massive and multi-pronged attack on the Indian Constitution. The attack on the poor is palpable: MGNREGS is the lifeline that has sustained lakhs of the rural poor, a fact that was particularly underscored during the pandemic when thousands of workers displaced by the lockdown made their way back to their villages and managed to survive there only because of the rights they enjoyed under the MGNREGS which ensured them work. The attack on the lives of the poor through the demolition of MGNREGS takes simultaneously the form of an attack on their rights and on the Constitution in general.

This abrogation of rights will reduce the rural poor from proud citizens of a free country to a bunch of desperate mendicants. As their condition of life deteriorates, the central government will no doubt come forward with some largesse, dispensed along with photographs of Narendra Modi, which  would still leave them materially worse off than before, but indebted to Modi for whatever crumbs they get. The reduction of the working poor from the status of citizens to that of mendicants is the ultimate goal of all fascistic formations that invariably promote a cult of the “leader”.

The assault on the Constitution is also an integral part of this very process. The Indian Constitution which emerged from the anti-colonial struggle took the “nation”, consisting of its people, as its starting point; the government under the Constitution is supposed to serve this “nation”. Fascistic formations however invert this entire relationship: the “nation” is identified with the “leader” and the people are supposed to be beholden to the “leader”, and serve him in all possible ways, including by electing him again and again. The abolition of people’s rights, the reduction of the status of the people to that of medicants who must remain eternally grateful to the “leader” for the few crumbs they get, and the scuttling of the Constitutional order to facilitate this transition from democracy to fascistic authoritarianism, thus constitute one integral process. The demolition of the MGNREGS, which was a remarkable scheme and which constituted the largest employment programme in the entire world, is a huge stride towards effecting this transition.