The most visible change the government is bringing to the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act is not stronger safeguards, not assured dignity of labour, not time bound accountability. It is the name. MNREGA is being rechristened as the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission Gramin.
Names, however, do not feed families.
As of 26 November 2025, the government’s pending liabilities under MNREGA for wage, material and administrative components stand at roughly Rs 10,000 crores. This figure excludes West Bengal. The Centre owes West Bengal Rs 3,082.52 crores. These are not abstract numbers. These are unpaid wages of the rural poor, people who worked trusting a law passed by Parliament.
Under the new banner, the government now promises wage payments within a fortnight. It sounds reassuring. But what happens when this promise is broken, as it has been for years? Who is held accountable then? Can a Prime Minister or a Chief Minister be legally answerable the way a private employer would be if salaries were withheld? Or does responsibility simply dissolve into silence?
Before the familiar deflection begins, let us avoid slipping into whataboutery. Questions were asked forcefully during the Congress regime, and that is precisely why that regime was voted out in search of better governance. That only sharpens the question we must ask today. Where is the better governance now?
This government has been at the helm for eleven years. Beyond rebranding the Planning Commission as NITI Aayog, the Indian Penal Code as the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and MNREGA as VB G RAM Gramin, what substantive governance reforms and people centric policies have we truly witnessed?
This is the deeper concern. In today’s India, almost everything has been reduced to a political tool. Parliament, policy, welfare schemes, even foreign relations are viewed through the lens of optics and advantage, not accountability.
No matter which political spectrum you belong to, pause for a moment as an Indian. Reflect on this. When welfare becomes branding and accountability disappears, it is not ideology that suffers first. It is people.
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