A week before the commencement of Parliament’s Budget session, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge criticised the Union government for changing the name of the MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) to VB-G RAM G (The Viksit Bharat — Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission-Gramin).
He said, “In the Budget session, we will fight for this issue. This is our promise to you… [The name change] is an attempt to remove Mahatma Gandhi’s name from public memory, weaken the Gram Swaraj (self-rule of the village) concept.”
Introduced in 2005 under the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government, the MGNREGS was notified with effect from February 2006 to provide basic livelihood opportunities in rural India.
Increasing reports of farmer suicides at the time informed the government’s decision to legally guarantee 100 days of employment in a financial year for one adult per household. This was to be done through public works, such as the construction of roads and wells, and other kinds of manual labour. The “Mahatma Gandhi” prefix, however, was added to the scheme only on October 2, 2009.
In December last year, the Union government introduced a Bill to repeal the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Additionally, the VB-G RAM G replaced the law, with increases in the duration of employment, and the share that state governments will pay to fund the scheme. The latter provision came under much criticism.
The Congress also criticised the removal of Gandhi’s name from the scheme, evoking his philosophy, which championed the self-sufficiency of rural areas for the health of the nation as a whole.
What is Gram Swaraj?
Across his writings, Gandhi envisioned the all-round development of villages and their self-reliance.
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He wrote on June 23, 1946, “I regard the growth of cities as an evil thing, unfortunate for mankind… The British have exploited India through its cities. The latter have exploited the villages. The blood of the villages is the cement with which the edifice of the cities is built. I want the blood that is today inflating the arteries of the cities to run once again in the blood vessels of the villagers.”
His speech was matched by action, be it in Champaran, where he led his first major satyagraha in 1917, and Sevagram, a self-sufficient ashram he established in Maharashtra.
Gandhi regularly wrote on the subject in his magazines Harijan and Young India. On July 26, 1942, he wrote in Harijan on the idea of Gram Swaraj, “My idea of Village Swaraj is that it is a complete republic, independent of its neighbours for its own vital wants, and yet interdependent for many others in which dependence is a necessity. Thus, every village’s first concern will be to grow its own food crops and cotton for its cloth…”
“There will be no castes such as we have today with their graded untouchability. Non-violence with its technique of Satyagraha and non-co-operation will be the sanction of the village community… The government of the village will be conducted by the Panchayat of five persons, annually elected by the adult villagers, male and female, possessing minimum prescribed qualifications… a perfect democracy based upon individual freedom…”
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On November 13, 1945, he wrote to Jawaharlal Nehru, “Every individual should have equal right and opportunity… From this point of view, there should be equality between villages and cities…”
What happened to Gandhi’s idea of Gram Swaraj?
In the early years of Independence, policy focus was on urban-centric development. The urban-rural gap kept widening, prompting migration to major industrial townships for jobs, even if that meant those coming from the villages ended up in slums, living in suboptimal conditions.
This is not to say that policies for rural areas were totally absent. Prominent ones include the abolition of the Zamindari system of land ownership (though reforms were limited to a few states), and schemes like the Jawahar Rojgar Yojana and Employment Assurance Scheme.
Increasingly, quality roads and electricity have made inroads into many rural areas and transformed life in villages, but without quality education and health facilities as building blocks, the persistence of caste-based divisions and the lack of livelihood opportunities, migration is often the best hope for a better life. Today, around 65% of Indians live in villages, compared to about 82% in 1960.
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Further, rural entrepreneurship is yet to get the kind of encouragement and policy support needed to create substantial job opportunities. And, despite the promotion of democratic decentralisation under the 73rd constitutional amendment, which accorded constitutional status to panchayati raj institutions, the self-reliance of Gandhi’s imagination remains out of reach.
Popular figures have, over the decades, sought to change the status quo through activism at the local level, but wider programmes have had mixed results. Prime Minister Narendra Modi put forth the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana in 2014, where Members of Parliament were asked to adopt and develop a village every year in their constituency. However, most MPs have shown limited interest in the programme.
Genuine devolution of power — financial, political and administrative — is still out of reach, often hinging upon the political will of those at higher levels of governance, and their reluctance to let go of control. Changing these impulses will require much more than policy and funding-related changes.
As Gandhi himself said of his self-sufficient village, “To model such a village may be the work of a lifetime.” For India’s 6.74 lakh villages, that certainly holds true.
