‘Save MGNREGA, Reject VB G RAM G’: Leftist Groups Launch Negative Campaign Against New Rural Employment Scheme

A section of Left-leaning academics, trade unions and activist groups has launched a campaign opposing the Centre’s newly announced Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin), or VB-GRAM-G Act, 2025, branding it as an attempt to dismantle the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).

As part of the campaign, a round-table meeting titled “Save MGNREGA, Reject VB-GRAM-G” has been convened at HKS Surjeet Bhawan in New Delhi on 8 January 2026. The poster circulated by organisers claims that the VB-GRAM-G Act has “completely uprooted” MGNREGA and undermined the principle of demand-based rural employment, describing the new legislation as a “final nail in the coffin” for rural welfare.

The mobilisation has drawn attention because of the individuals and networks associated with it. Economists and activists linked to Left political and academic circles are said to be backing the initiative, including Jayati Ghosh, a former professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and current chairperson of its Centre for Economic Studies and Planning. Ghosh has been a prominent critic of the Narendra Modi-led government’s economic reforms over the past decade.

Critics of the campaign have also highlighted Ghosh’s past political positions, noting that she was among academics who publicly criticised the government during the 2016 JNU campus protests and that her name, along with those of other Left leaders, had earlier surfaced in political controversies linked to protest movements. They further note that Ghosh is a contributor to international policy platforms such as the Institute for New Economic Thinking, which is funded by the Open Society Foundations, arguing that the same ideological ecosystem tends to mobilise whenever major governance reforms are introduced.

Organisers of the round-table, operating under the banner of the Joint Platform of Agricultural and Workers’ Unions’ and the NREGA Sangharsh Morcha, maintain that the meeting is intended to build opposition to what they see as a dilution of statutory employment guarantees and to chart a course of action to defend rural workers’ interests.

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