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New Delhi: Days after a name change of the UPA-era Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the world’s largest rural job scheme, was speculated upon, it turns out that the Narendra Modi government is indeed set to rename it to the Viksit Bharat—Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill.

The Bill, if passed in parliament, will become an act which will have the acronym VB–G RAM G Act.

Speculation that The Wire reported upon had said that the MGNREGS will be renamed Pujya Bapu Gramin Rozgar Guarantee Yojana or PBGRGY. As Mahatma Gandhi is also called ‘Bapu’, this would have partially retained the tribute in the original naming.

It turns out now that the repackaged proposed Bill will remove ‘Mahatma Gandhi’ entirely.

Days

The government’s proposal says that it aims to establish a rural development framework “aligned with the national vision of Viksit
Bharat @2047, by providing a statutory guarantee of 125 days of wage employment in every financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to undertake unskilled manual work.” The MGNREGS guarantee was for 100 days, based on demand, in rural areas across most parts of the country.

Centre-state split

The proposed bill says that the scheme will be implemented as a “Centrally Sponsored Scheme, under which the financial liability shall be shared between the Central Government and the State Government in accordance with the fund-sharing pattern provided under sub-section (2) of section 22 of this Act, including enhanced share of the Central Government in respect of the North-Eastern States and Himalayan States, and the responsibility of the State Government to bear any expenditure incurred in excess of its allocated share.”

This possibly means that the states’ share will rise to 40%, as in any Centrally Sponsored Scheme, at a time........

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