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Viksit Bharat Livelihood Vision

Syllabus

GS 3: Employment

Why in the News?

Recently, the President of India gave assent to the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025, enhancing rural employment entitlements and restructuring livelihood delivery through a strengthened statutory, decentralised, and convergence-based framework. This process, much like obtaining environmental clearances for development projects, marks a significant step in rural policy.

Introduction

  • India’s rural employment framework has entered a new phase with the enactment of the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025.
  • The law strengthens livelihood security, deepens decentralisation, and integrates welfare with long-term rural development through statutory guarantees, participatory planning, and accountable governance mechanisms. This approach mirrors the principles of environmental jurisprudence in balancing development with sustainability.

Background of the New Act

  • The Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025, marks a major evolution in India’s rural employment policy.
  • It replaces earlier limitations by expanding the statutory employment guarantee from 100 to 125 days and linking employment with durable asset creation, agricultural stability, and livelihood resilience. This expansion is akin to how environmental clearances have evolved to consider broader impacts.
  • This Act is not a departure from welfare commitments.
  • Instead, it is a recalibration based on implementation experience, aimed at ensuring that legal entitlements translate into real, timely, and productive employment on the ground, much like how ex post facto environmental clearances aim to regularize existing projects.

Addressing the Misreading of the Act

Common Claims and Their Limitations

  • Several criticisms have emerged regarding the Act.
  • These include claims that: o Employment guarantees have been weakened o Demand-based employment has been diluted o Decentralisation has been undermined o The reform represents fiscal withdrawal o The law was passed without consultation
  • A close reading of the Act, however, shows that these assertions do not hold up to factual or legal scrutiny, similar to how environmental impact assessments often dispel misconceptions about development projects.

Welfare and Development: Not a Trade-off

Correcting a Conceptual Error

  • A key misunderstanding arises from viewing welfare and development as opposing choices. The Act rejects this false binary.
  • Welfare is ensured through a stronger, justiciable employment guarantee
  • Development is achieved through durable infrastructure and productivity-enhancing works
  • Both objectives are treated as mutually reinforcing
  • Income support, agricultural stability, asset creation, and long-term productivity are integrated into a single statutory continuum, reflecting the precautionary principle in environmental policy.

Strengthening the Legal Right to Employment

Expanded Entitlement

  • The Act strengthens, rather than dilutes, the legal right to work:
  • Statutory employment guarantee increased from 100 to 125 days
  • The right remains justiciable and enforceable

Removal of Procedural Barriers

  • Earlier procedural clauses that effectively denied unemployment allowance have been removed.
  • This directly addresses the long-standing gap between legal promise and lived reality, similar to how ex-post environmental clearances aim to bridge compliance gaps.

Improved Grievance Redressal

  • Time-bound grievance redress mechanisms are reinforced
  • Accountability for delays and denials is clearly defined
  • These changes enhance enforceability rather than weakening rights.

Demand-Based Employment and Advance Planning

No Abandonment of Worker Demand

  • Contrary to criticism, demand for work continues to originate from workers themselves.

What Has Changed

  • Planning now happens in advance through participatory village-level processes
  • Administrative readiness ensures work availability when demand arises
  • This approach prevents situations where workers demand employment but are turned away due to lack of prepared works.

Decentralisation with Coordination

Role of Local Institutions

  • Gram panchayats remain primary planning and implementing authorities
  • Gram sabhas retain approval powers over local plans

Structured Planning Framework

  • Viksit Gram Panchayat Plans are prepared locally and then aggregated at block, district, State, and national levels. o Local priorities are not overridden o Aggregation enables convergence, coordination, and visibility
  • What is centralised is coherence, not control, similar to how the Forest Conservation Act balances local needs with national environmental goals.

Consultative and Evidence-Based Reform

Process Before the Bill

  • The Act was preceded by: o Extensive consultations with State governments o Technical workshops o Multi-stakeholder discussions

Learning from Experience

  • Design features were shaped by: o Feedback from States o Lessons from droughts, migration spikes, and COVID-19 disruptions
  • The reform reflects accumulated implementation knowledge, not unilateral decision-making, much like how environmental jurisprudence evolves through case law and practical experience.

Trends in Allocation and Outcomes

Rising Financial Commitment

  • Budget allocation increased from ₹33,000 crore (2013–14) to ₹86,000 crore (2024–25)
  • Central funds released rose from ₹2.13 lakh crore to ₹8.53 lakh crore

Improved Employment Outcomes

  • Person days generated increased from 1,660 crore to 3,210 crore
  • Completed works expanded from 153 lakh to 862 lakh

Gender and Efficiency Gains

  • Women’s participation rose from 48% to 56.73%
  • Over 99% fund transfer orders are generated on time
  • Nearly 99% active workers are Aadhaar-linked
  • These trends indicate strengthened delivery, not erosion, adhering to the polluter pays principle by ensuring efficient use of resources.

Addressing Structural Weaknesses

Problems Identified Earlier

  • Implementation revealed persistent issues: o Irregular employment o Weak enforcement of unemployment allowance o Fragmented asset creation o Duplication and ghost entries
  • The new Act directly targets these structural gaps.

Fiscal Architecture and Shared Responsibility

Central Contribution Enhanced

  • Centre’s share increases from ₹86,000 crore to nearly ₹95,000 crore

Funding Ratios

  • Standard 60:40 Centre–State model
  • 90:10 ratio for northeastern and Himalayan States and Jammu & Kashmir
  • This reinforces cooperative federalism, not fiscal withdrawal.

Equity and Flexibility for States

Rule-Based Allocation

  • State-wise allocations are determined through objective, rule-based parameters.

Contextual Flexibility

  • States may recommend relaxations during: o Natural disasters o Extraordinary situations
  • This includes temporary expansion of works and employment days, similar to how coastal regulation zone norms may be adjusted in emergencies.

Alignment with Agricultural Cycles

Seasonal Adjustments

  • States can notify up to 60 days annually when works will not be undertaken
  • Notifications can vary by district, block, or gram panchayat
  • This ensures employment complements, rather than disrupts, agricultural activity.

Reviewing the UPA Record

Mismatch Between Promise and Delivery

  • Wages capped at ₹100 from 2009 despite inflation
  • Wage freeze justified by blaming States

Declining Commitment

  • Allocations reduced from ₹40,100 crore (2010–11) to ₹33,000 crore (2012–13)
  • Workers declined from 7.55 crore to 6.93 crore by 2013

Audit Findings

  • The CAG (2013) reported: o 4.33 lakh fake or defective job cards o Large-scale fund irregularities o Delayed wages in 23 States
  • Poor records in over half of gram panchayats
  • High-poverty States used only about 20% of allocated funds.

Reform as Renewal, Not Retrenchment

  • The debate is not about welfare versus development.
  • It is about whether to halt a framework that under-delivered or reform it based on experience.
  • The new Act: o Preserves and expands the legal right to work o Strengthens worker protections o Integrates welfare with productivity and infrastructure

Conclusion

The Viksit Bharat Rozgar Mission Act, 2025 renews India’s rural employment guarantee by expanding entitlements, reinforcing decentralisation, improving accountability, and linking welfare with development, ensuring that statutory rights translate into productive livelihoods and resilient rural economies. This approach, reminiscent of the evolution in environmental policy, seeks to balance immediate needs with long-term sustainability, much like how environmental clearances aim to reconcile development with ecological preservation.

Source

The Hindu

Mains Practice Question

Discuss the changes introduced in decentralised planning and demand-based employment under the Viksit Bharat Rozgar Mission Act.