Jobs vanish in villages as MGNREGS fades, VB-G RAM G faces delays: Here’s why

Even as rising prices of gas and food are driving thousands of workers to villages from Surat, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Bangalore, and Hyderabad, rural India is facing its own job crisis.

MGNREGS work is grinding to a halt, and its replacement, the Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin), shows no sign of taking off.

This is the peak demand season for rural jobs; the rabi harvest is over and the kharif sowing season is months away.

For example, the first three months of FY26 generated 44% of total MGNREGS work. Of this, April 2025 accounted for 11.5% or 265 million person-days; in sharp contrast, April 2026 has generated only 22.8 million person-days (8.5%) as of April 22.

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Adding to the trouble, MGNREGS payments have remained frozen since January 2026, and the wage revision for FY27 has not been announced. The Centre allocated ₹30,000 crore in the budget to wind up MGNREGS, but it will almost be exhausted in clearing pending dues of ₹25,697 crore, leaving little for new works.

On the other hand, the Centre notified the VB-G RAM G law on December 21, 2025, and allocated additional funds of ₹95,692 crore but has not notified a new work schedule, operational guidelines, or apportioned the allocation to individual states.

This creates a piquant situation for states. States cannot draw up or roll out panchayat-wise work, which requires prior approval from the Centre and, in turn, requires a new work schedule and operational guidelines. Nor can they earmark their individual share of the 40% fund in the absence of apportionment.

This has also created a piquant situation for rural workers sitting idle. The number of “active job cards” is 77.7 million.

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Strange paradox of simultaneous migration

James Herenj of Jharkhand NAREGA Watch tells Business Today that he is witnessing a strange paradox in his state. “Trainloads of urban workers are alighting at Ranchi and heading for villages in Palamu, Latehar, and Giridih districts. At the same time, more than the usual number of villagers are moving out of West Singhbhum, Chatra, Dumka, and Jamtara districts to Kerala and Tamil Nadu for work.”

The villagers, he says, “are going more in hope,” aware as they are of the hardship faced by urban workers.

A similar rise in migration is taking place in Andhra Pradesh’s Rayalaseema and Eastern Ghats, Telangana’s Mahbubnagar, and northern Karnataka districts, where villagers are largely dependent on MGNREGS work. Chakradhar Buddha, a Visakhapatnam-based researcher, says that in Andhra Pradesh alone, the March quarter saw a drop of 10.7 million person-days of MGNREGS work, and the trend continues in April.

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Villagers may stop migrating if reverse migration continues, but the rural job scheme may not be able to absorb the inflow as it did during the pandemic. FY21 saw MGNREGS allocations jump 55% to ₹1.1 lakh crore, from ₹71,687.7 crore in FY20.

That may not be easy this time due to the changes introduced.

Challenges of rolling out VB-G RAM G

The new law gives six months for rollout, which would mean the peak demand season for rural jobs (June quarter) would be almost over.

The law also mandates that all work be “integrated with the PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan,” which focuses on large infrastructure projects covering railways, roads, ports, waterways, airports, mass transport, and logistics infrastructure.

Integrating this with small and minor rural works at the gram panchayat level will be a challenge. Swabhimani Mazdoor Sangathan’s Apurva asserts: “This is the biggest puzzle right now.”

There are other challenges.

The law also requires new identity and job cards, and facial recognition for attendance. Given the technical challenges of the Aadhaar-linked payment system (technical errors, data mismatch, and poor infrastructure), the efficacy of facial recognition will be tested. Adding to this, the IMD has predicted a monsoon 8% below normal, and with rural India contributing 46% to GDP, a job crisis in both rural and urban India could translate into a broader livelihood crisis.