President Murmu Signs VB-G RAM G Act, Scrapping 20-Year-Old MGNREGA

Big welfare entitlements rarely die; they are renamed, downsized, or devolved. Britain’s 1834 Poor Law replaced parish relief with workhouses, the U.S. converted Aid to Families with Dependent Children into state-capped TANF block grants in 1996, and now India’s 2005 MGNREGA—often likened to Roosevelt’s WPA—has been turned into a supply-driven, cost-shared programme. Each reform shifted fiscal risk from the central exchequer to local governments and imposed ceilings that temper the original guarantee. VB-G RAM G follows the same arc: rhetorical expansion (125 vs 100 days) masks tighter purse strings and greater federal control, reflecting a decade-long trend of recentralisation even while invoking “co-operative federalism.” Whether this moment matters a century from now depends on two tests: if India’s rural labour market diversifies enough to render a jobs guarantee irrelevant, the law will be a footnote; if climate volatility and mechanisation keep casual farm work scarce, dismantling a rights-based safety net in 2025 could be remembered as a pivotal retreat reminiscent of the Poor Law Amendment’s harsh legacy.