Twenty years after the launch of NREG, which reshaped rural wages, women’s work and village assets, the programme is being replaced by G RAM G. What changed, what broke, and will the new scheme deliver?
The February 1 budget allocated around Rs 95,000 crore for G RAM G, BJP’s rural works scheme. The day after, February 2, would have been NREG’s 20th anniversary. Congress’s scheme is now history.
But it’s a history that demands careful assessment. NREG was one of the world’s largest job guarantee programmes, a social welfare-cum-asset creation experiment launched in 2006. It was Congress’s policy response to the political message from the 2004 elections. Vajpayee’s BJP, every pundit’s favourite to win, lost, and the general consensus was that BJP had lost touch with the rural poor’s ground reality. NREG was the apogee of Congress’s aam aadmi strategy.