Several reports earlier this month noted a nearly 50 per cent drop in employment generated under the Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin), or the VB-G RAM-G. The scheme, launched last year as a successor to the two-decade-old Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, guarantees 125 days of rural wage employment, faster payments, and a technology-enabled delivery system built for a Viksit Bharat. It is the world’s largest public-works programme, backed by a budget of Rs 95,692 crore.

The initial dip is too early to judge the scheme’s efficacy. The low numbers do pose a more important question, however: Is a wage-guarantee model, however well designed, the right instrument for rural India in 2026? Public employment guarantees have a long lineage, from Depression-era America to emperors who commissioned public works, including temples, to generate wages. The logic was straightforward: When private employment cannot absorb surplus labour — because industry is nascent, services are thin, and agriculture is overcrowded — the state must step in as an employer, providing wages through public works to prevent destitution. That logic held force in India when........

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