The broken promise of right to work

Why in the News

Employment under India’s rural work guarantee fell 68 per cent in July and August against the average of the preceding five years. The Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, enacted by the Union government in December 2025 to replace the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 (MGNREGA), came into implementation on 1 July. A three judge Supreme Court Bench led by the Chief Justice of India dismissed a petition on minimum wages in rural employment guarantee programmes on 21 August and sought a fresh one. The same Bench asked whether the right to work should be treated on par with Article 21, the fundamental right to life. The tension is that the right to work sits in the unenforceable Directive Principles, and the one statute that had converted it into a demand driven entitlement has been replaced by a law that caps funds and shifts cost onto the States.

What is the VB-GRAM G Act?

1. It replaced the 2005 employment guarantee law: The Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-GRAM G) Act took over from MGNREGA with effect from 1 July.
2. Funding is capped rather than demand driven: The Act places an arbitrary cap on funds instead of releasing money against work actually demanded.
3. The wage is not tied to a minimum wage: The Act does not link its wage rate to any statutory minimum wage.
4. Areas can be denotified: It carries provisions to denotify specified areas and exclude them from the scheme, which ends the universality MGNREGA carried.

What has happened to rural employment since 1 July?

1. Employment fell 68 per cent in July and August: The comparison is with the average for those two months over the preceding five years.
2. The five year average was 3.44 crore households: They generated about 44 crore person days of work in July and August.
3. This year the figures are 1.39 crore households and 14.94 crore person days: The data are as on 31 August 2026 for 2026-27.
4. The decline predates the new law: Households employed in those months fell steadily from 4.79 crore in 2021-22 to 2.44 crore in 2025-26 under MGNREGA itself.
5. Household earnings have halved: Estimated total earnings of households in July and August fell to about half of the same months last year.

Why does the Constituent Assembly debate matter to the present dispute?

1. The disagreement was about placement, not value: Most members agreed that a right to work was vital, and the argument was whether it belonged among the fundamental rights or in the Directive Principles of State Policy (DPSP), which are precepts for framing law rather than enforceable rights.
2. K.T. Shah argued for a fundamental right: He held that the State needed a constitutional and positive legal mandate to guarantee socio-economic security to its citizens.
3. B.R. Ambedkar held it was not yet enforceable: He treated the right to work as an essential goal whose immediate universal enforcement was not fiscally or institutionally viable in a newly independent India hollowed out of its resources.
4. The placement was aspiration, not abandonment: Locating the right among the Directive Principles reflected a deliberate constitutionalism of aspiration rather than a rejection of the welfare ideal.

Which constitutional provisions carry the right to work?

1. Article 41 states the obligation: The State shall, within the limits of its economic capacity and development, make effective provision for securing the right to work.
2. Article 39 covers livelihood and equal pay: It directs the State towards an adequate means of livelihood and equal pay for equal work for both men and women.
3. Articles 42 and 43 cover conditions and wages: They require just and humane conditions of work, and a living wage with a decent standard of life for all workers.

How did the aspiration become a statutory right?

1. Olga Tellis established the link to life: In Olga Tellis vs Bombay Municipal Corporation (1985) the Supreme Court ruled that the right to livelihood was a necessary condition for the fundamental right to life.
2. Activists and rural workers drove the legislation: The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act was passed in 2005 following their collective effort.
3. It made a pan-India right to work real for the first time: The State carried a statutory obligation to provide employment at minimum wages.
4. The scope was always narrow: The guarantee covered 100 days of work per rural household, and the programme was chronically underfunded.

What is wrong with the Bench’s own remark on minimum wages?

1. The remark links a wage floor to fewer workers: The Bench observed that if financial resources remained the same, a minimum wage threshold could reduce the number of workers who could be given employment.
2. It cuts against Sanjit Roy: In Sanjit Roy vs State of Rajasthan (1983) the Supreme Court held that payment below minimum wages violates Article 23 of the Constitution and is akin to forced labour.
3. It assumes a fixed budget: The reasoning rests on the resources for a welfare programme remaining unchanged and constrained.
4. Higher wages raise demand, not only cost: Higher rural wages increase purchasing power and effective demand for goods and services, producing a multiplier effect on productivity.

How did the wage fall behind in the first place?

1. Wages were delinked from the wage law in 2009: MGNREGA wages ceased to be tied to the Minimum Wages Act, 1948.
2. They barely kept pace with inflation: The daily wage in July and August rose from Rs 210 in 2021-22 to Rs 282.5 this year while person days collapsed.
3. They stayed below agricultural minimum wages: The MGNREGA rate remained lower than the minimum agricultural wage in most States.
4. Women are increasingly unpaid family workers: Rural wages have been stagnant for a decade, and women are recorded in growing numbers as working without pay within the household.

Why does the new Act face a constitutional objection?

1. Non-retrogression bars rolling a realised right back: Once the State has reached a level of progressive legislation and enforceability of a right, it cannot adopt measures that deliberately undo it.
2. The Supreme Court affirmed the doctrine in Navtej Singh Johar vs Union of India: It operates as a check on State power, ensuring that rights once realised are not diluted later.
3. The replacement appears to breach it: Substituting a demand driven statutory entitlement with a fund limited mission dilutes a right that had already been realised in law.
4. The fiscal shift compounds the problem: States already face curtailed borrowing limits under the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) framework, and the new Act adds to what they must fund.

Challenges to the rural employment guarantee

1. A capped budget converts a guarantee into a scheme: Work can be refused once the allocation is exhausted, so the entitlement lapses at the point demand peaks. Eg. MGNREGA allocations were routinely spent before the fourth quarter, leaving States carrying negative opening balances into the next year.
   The Fix: Treat the allocation as a first charge revised at the supplementary budget stage against verified work demand.
2. Wage payment delay destroys the incentive to seek work: A worker who waits months for payment stops applying, and the falling application count is then read as falling need. Eg. Delayed wage payments under MGNREGA drew repeated censure from the Supreme Court and from parliamentary committees.
   The Fix: Release the statutory delay compensation automatically from the central account rather than on an individual worker’s complaint.
3. Work demand is registered by the body that must then supply it: A gram panchayat under budget pressure has an incentive not to record demand, so the shortfall never appears in the data. Eg. Dated receipts against work applications are prescribed by law and are rarely issued in practice.
   The Fix: Allow demand to be registered through an independent time stamped channel outside the implementing agency.
4. Social audit units depend on the governments they audit: Their staff and budgets come from the State administration, which limits what they are able to report. Eg. Social audit units in several States operate well below their sanctioned staff strength.
   The Fix: Fund social audit units through a ring fenced central allocation and place their findings before the State legislature.
5. Asset creation is measured by expenditure rather than durability: A work is closed on payment rather than on verified usefulness, so the durable asset the programme exists to create goes unchecked. Eg. Comptroller and Auditor General audits of MGNREGA have repeatedly reported incomplete and unusable works.
   The Fix: Make geo-tagged completion and a one year durability check the condition for closing a work in the management information system.

Conclusion

An unenforceable directive principle survives only through the statute that implements it. India now has a rural work law that no longer carries the features which made the earlier one a right, and the collapse in employment is the first measurable consequence of that. What must change is that the wage be linked to a living wage standard, that payment be made on time, and that social audits be run by panchayati raj institutions holding real powers. These are the minimum conditions under which a work guarantee functions as a guarantee at all.

Back2Basics: Minimum Wages Act, 1948

1. Purpose: It empowers the appropriate government to fix and revise minimum rates of wages payable in scheduled employments.
2. Dual authority: Both the Centre and the States act as appropriate governments, each notifying rates for the employments within its own sphere.
3. Components of the wage: A minimum wage may combine a basic rate with a cost of living allowance, so it moves as prices move.
4. Current status: It has been subsumed into the Code on Wages, 2019, which extends a statutory floor wage across all employments rather than scheduled ones alone.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2011] Among the following who are eligible to benefit from the “Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act”? (a) Adult members of only the scheduled caste and scheduled tribe households (b) Adult members of below poverty line (BPL) households (c) Adult members of households of all backward communities (d) Adult members of any household ANSWER: (d)”