From ‘monument of failure’ to rebrand: Centre’s move to replace MGNREGA seen as bid to blunt Opposition attack

New Delhi: Ten years ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi mockingly vowed to keep MGNREGA “alive as a monument of your (UPA) failures” but the move to replace it with ‘VB-G RAM G’ now is seen as an attempt to rob the Opposition an avenue to target the government in a similar manner it sought to take the sting out of the campaign built around Caste Census.

Modi has been facing criticism from the Opposition over his comments against the backdrop of the MGNREGA becoming a lifeline for the rural folks during the Covid-19 pandemic. He had said that his “political acumen” has told him to “keep MNREGA alive as a monument to your failures since Independence”, as they were “still making people dig holes” after 60 years.

Despite running it even after being critical of it, the BJP could not put its stamp on the scheme as people identify it as a UPA scheme and the government appears to have adopted the same strategy to tackle the perception problem the same way it did on tackling the question of Caste Census.

As top Congress leader Rahul Gandhi made it one of his core issues that gathered some traction, the government announced Caste Census to be conducted along with general Census. The decision effectively kept the issue out of the election campaign in Bihar.

Congress sees a pattern in the new rural job guarantee scheme – renaming previous government’s schemes to present it as their own. Last week, its Social Media and Digital Platforms Chairperson Supriya Shrinate listed 32 schemes, which were “renamed” by the Modi government.

On Friday, Congress General Secretary (Communications) Jairam Ramesh said the Modi government is on its way to finish off the UPA government’s “landmark” initiatives one by one. He said RTI and MGNREGA are finished and it will target the Forest Rights Act, Land Acquisition Act and National Food Security Act, which was renamed as PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana.

With the tweak in the scheme and renaming the Bill that invokes the name of Lord Ram, a symbol it has politically used, the government expects that it would have more control on the narrative around the rural job guarantee scheme. Opposition leaders said the Centre could easily wash its hands off on the failure of the scheme and put the onus on states.

Initially, media had reported after a Cabinet meeting earlier this month that the Bill would be renamed as ‘Pujya Bapu Gramin Rozgar Yojana’ but on December 13 it came to light that the Bill would bear the name of Ram in an acronym.

A senior Opposition leader said with the Centre fixing its budget and any expenditure beyond that has to be met by the state, it would eventually lead to the killing of the scheme.

The Opposition believes that changing the character of the scheme would boomerang on the government in case of rural distress. From making it a ‘demand-driven’ scheme to ‘supply-driven’ and mandating states to substantially fund it, they feel it would squeeze the scheme.

Incidentally, states made to share 40% funds for the scheme have not come out of the blue, as Union Minister Giriraj Singh, when he was Rural Development Minister in Modi 2.0 had publicly said that states should also bear the financial burden of the scheme, reasoning that it would help in tackling pilferage in the scheme.