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3 weeks ago
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ARTICLE AD BOX
Summary
India’s rural job guarantee has been rejigged for relaunch, but its core attribute of universality seems at risk. How our safety net evolves as the economy expands should ideally be guided by a national consensus.
India’s economy was under $1 trillion when its rural job-guarantee scheme was launched in 2006. Now it’s four times that size. By turning the Indian state into an employer of last resort, it created a useful safety net. Now it’s in for a relaunch, renamed and rejigged.
While free foodgrain counts as poverty relief too, this open job offer was designed to put money in folks’ hands by letting anyone earn a daily wage on demand—with an annual limit of 100 days. The revised version will raise this to 125, but it should ideally have no cap at all—for the sake of universality, its big conceptual plus point.
This is also why farming-season suspensions of 60 days need a rethink. Employers of farm labour competing with a centrally funded job assurer had set an effective year-round floor for wages. Why risk losing that gain by making space for our labour code on minimum pay to be defied?
As for the scheme’s funding, diffused burden sharing with states might weaken its all-India promise of a job for the asking if state funds run out or turn patchy. The government’s reworked safety net has its strengths, no doubt, but as GDP amps up, so must our debate on welfare for Viksit Bharat. A consensus should be the aim.
English (US) ·