Renaming the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) into the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Employment and Livelihood Mission (Rural) Bill, dubbed "G RAM G" and pushed through Parliament in a truncated and contentious process in both Houses, is not a semantic exercise. It is a political intervention with questionable material, constitutional, and ideological objectives, and with serious consequences for the rural poor. What is being attempted is not merely a change in nomenclature, but a restructuring that delivers a substantial blow to social justice while simultaneously advancing the majoritarian agenda of the ruling party.

The comparison between MGNREGA and G RAM G exposes the nature of this shift. The Act was originally called NREGA in 2005 and subsequently renamed MGNREGA in keeping with Mahatma Gandhi's vision that India would be strong only when its vast rural population was empowered. It was conceived as a statutory guarantee, with social justice embedded in law. Any rural household seeking work was legally entitled to it within a defined period; failing which, an unemployment allowance was payable.

Further, the scheme espoused the dignity of labour, decentralisation, restraint in the exercise of power, and the ethical obligation of the state towards its poorest citizens. Its design—legal enforceability, decentralised planning, and social audits—produced results that drew global attention and acclaim, including from the Levy Economics Institute, which has written an open letter to the government to retain MGNREGA in its original form.

The impact of MGNREGA is evident in tangible outcomes: economic upliftment in rural areas, over half the beneficiaries being women, and nearly 40 per cent Dalits and tribals. Over two decades, benefits have manifested in rural wage growth, improved living conditions, better access to healthcare, and an overall elevation in quality of life—an essential component of social justice for close to 50 million households.

G RAM G, by contrast, is anchored neither in law nor in constructive economics, nor in ethics. Where MGNREGA was an assured right, G RAM G is laden with deprivation while simultaneously speaking the language of identity. Where the former was citizen-centric, the latter foregrounds the government and a concealed ideological agenda. This is not a neutral substitution. It marks an ideological reorientation of welfare itself. In the process, social justice is displaced and diminished.

This displacement becomes clearer when one examines funding. Under the existing MGNREGA framework, the Centre funds 100 per cent of unskilled labour wages and a major share of material costs. In practice, this meant the Union government bore around 90 per cent of total expenditure, with states contributing a much smaller share—typically part of material costs and the unemployment allowance. This is why commentators and officials consistently described the effective Centre–state split as roughly 90:10.

A legally guaranteed right to work required an open-ended commitment from the central government. States, with widely varying fiscal capacities, could not reasonably be expected to shoulder the burden of a constitutional guarantee. The Centre's dominant funding role was integral to social justice and upward socio-economic mobility.

These principles are now being dismantled. The proposed G RAM G Bill, 2025, formally establishes a 60:40 cost-sharing formula between the Centre and states for most states, with a 90:10 exception for some northeastern and Himalayan states. Under this structure, states will now be responsible for 40 per cent of the funding burden, including wages and material costs—a significant departure from the earlier model in which the Centre covered nearly all costs.

It fundamentally alters the nature of the programme. A legal guarantee backed by central funding is transformed into a conditional scheme, dependent on the finances of individual states. Poorer states lack the fiscal capacity to absorb this burden without cutting work. The result is predictable: fewer employment days, delayed wages, restricted job cards, and silent contraction, potentially leading to collapse. Social justice is thus deprived not through repeal but through machination.

This funding shift also represents a direct assault on cooperative federalism. MGNREGA was constitutionally significant precisely because it balanced central responsibility with state implementation and local adaptation. That balance is now replaced by an asymmetric arrangement in which the Centre retains control over norms, approvals, and narrative, while pushing fiscal responsibility downward—responsibility without authority, authority without accountability—weakening federalism through fiscal coercion rather than open confrontation.

The impact on Panchayati Raj is equally severe. MGNREGA was among the most decentralised welfare programmes in independent India. Panchayats and gram sabhas were central to planning, execution, and social auditing. The programme strengthened grassroots democracy by giving rural citizens real control over development priorities and public expenditure. Rebranding and centralised control hollow out this architecture.

Alongside fiscal offloading, a quieter but devastating process is at work: the systematic reduction of employment. States are increasingly pressured to limit job cards, restrict workdays, or delay project approvals. This allows the Centre to cut expenditure without formally dismantling the programme. On paper, the scheme continues; in practice, its scope shrinks. The political cost is transferred to states and local officials, while the Centre maintains plausible deniability.

The most radical departure, however, lies in the erosion of the legal guarantee itself. MGNREGA was not designed as benevolent welfare; it was a justiciable right. Persistent delays in work allocation, non-payment of unemployment allowance, and bureaucratic hurdles hollow out the promise. Renaming and restructuring accelerate this erosion by shifting the programme's character from rights-based to discretionary. Once welfare is reframed as generosity rather than obligation, the legal foundation collapses.

It is at this point that the religious dimension becomes central. The most disturbing aspect of the renaming exercise is its coercive nature, deviously pitching a deity against the people. By rebranding in explicitly religious terms, participation itself becomes a form of religious cooption. Beneficiaries, local officials, and implementing staff are compelled to utter religious terminology in the course of accessing or administering a constitutional entitlement. For religious minorities, this is not a neutral linguistic shift but a forced affirmation of a faith not their own.

The coercion is subtle, even deniable, but real. No formal order mandates religious utterance, yet the acronym renders it unavoidable. Social justice is subtly transformed from a right into a ritual. The state crosses a constitutional line: it ceases to be a neutral guarantor of entitlements and becomes an agent enforcing religious conformity.

This is where the renaming becomes devious in its deepest sense. It forces a false and corrosive choice—between a deity and a human moral tradition—where no such choice is either necessary or legitimate. The citizen is placed in an impossible position. To question the renaming is to risk being portrayed as opposing religion itself. Faith is weaponised not through belief, but through economic intimidation.

This strategy cannot be understood without acknowledging the RSS's unresolved hostility toward Gandhi. The RSS never accepted Gandhi's moral authority or his conception of the Indian nation. Gandhi's nationalism was rooted in pluralism and constitutional morality, demanding that power justify itself ethically rather than merely electorally. The RSS's nationalism, by contrast, is rooted in cultural dominance and majoritarian assertion. These positions were irreconcilable from the outset.

Gandhi's assassination by Nathuram Godse was the most extreme expression of that hostility. While the RSS has repeatedly sought distance from the Act, it has never reconciled with Gandhi's ideas. The multiple bans imposed on the RSS, beginning with Gandhi's assassination, recognised the threat posed by an ideology that rejected the moral foundations of the republic. Though later revoked, the ideology persisted, re-entering public life through electoral politics, with the BJP serving as its political instrument.

This also explains the consistency of the BJP's symbolic interventions—renaming projects, institutions, and public infrastructure to suit a theocratic majoritarian agenda. Renaming is central because it enables ideological transformation without legislative debate or institutional reform. It works quietly, persistently, and cumulatively, altering what appears normal.

Yet the renaming of welfare schemes crosses a particularly dangerous line by shifting welfare from constitutional space into cultural space. It redefines the relationship between the state and citizen on theocratic terms by injecting religious symbolism and altering its fundamental character.

The resulting false opposition—Gandhi versus Ram—is especially insidious. It invents a civilisation conflict where none exists. Gandhi did not stand against Hinduism; his morality was deeply shaped by Hindu philosophy, even as he rejected reducing religion to a tool of political dominance. Ram, within Hindu tradition, symbolises duty, restraint, and ethical conduct. To deploy Ram as a political counter-symbol to Gandhi is to hollow out both, pitching a deity against the Father of the Nation. This is not reverence for either; it is degradation of both.

This tactic also reveals insecurity. When governance outcomes weaken—when unemployment rises, rural distress deepens, and welfare commitments shrink—symbolism becomes a substitute for performance. Renaming requires no delivery, only narrative control, with the deity providing insulation against policy failure.

The funding sleight of hand further deepens the danger by enabling political discrimination. Once states are required to fund 40 per cent, the Union government acquires a powerful lever. Funds can be delayed, conditions tightened, and approvals stalled. Opposition-ruled states can be deprived, while ruling-party states face fewer obstacles. This mirrors the pattern visible in GST reimbursements, where delays and disputes have disproportionately affected opposition states through bureaucratic rather than overtly partisan means.

The consequence is structural inequality. Welfare becomes uneven across the Union. Citizens' access to work depends not on need but on political and ideological alignment, undermining equal citizenship.

This raises an unavoidable question: is the treasury empty, or are funds simply redirected away from social welfare? If resources were adequate and priorities aligned with social justice, there would be no need to reorient a successful programme. Yet large-scale tax concessions, corporate write-offs, and prestige projects continue unabated, while welfare alone is subjected to austerity masked as reform and devotion. The contrast is revealing.

Why is the government doing this? The answer lies at the intersection of ideology and economics. Ideologically, MGNREGA is uncomfortable for a regime that valorises market discipline and cultural nationalism over social rights. Economically, it represents a permanent fiscal obligation toward the poorest—one that cannot be easily curtailed without political cost. Renaming serves both purposes.

This is not reform in any meaningful sense. It is a displacement of responsibility, of accountability, and of constitutional intent. No welfare scheme, regardless of its name, can survive if stripped of its ethical foundation. And no civilisation is strengthened by forcing its citizens to choose between a deity and the moral tradition that gave birth to the republic.

This is not economics. It is not reverence. It is abuse—and it must be recognised as such before the damage becomes irreversible.