VB-GRAM G Doesn't Enhance the Employment Guarantee - It Guts It

The Gap Between What VB-GRAM G Promises and What It Delivers

The Position VB-GRAM

G was sold as an upgrade to MGNREGA - more guaranteed days, higher allocation, better technology. Its own first-month data says otherwise. Rural employment fell by nearly half year-on-year in July 2026 and household participation dropped by a similar margin. A scheme cannot be called an enhancement of a work guarantee if fewer people are actually getting work under it.

Why the Numbers Move This Way

Two design choices explain most of the gap. First, the shift to mandatory E-KYC and twice-daily NMMS facial recognition attendance has led to large-scale deletion of job cards, particularly among workers in areas with poor digital connectivity or limited smartphone access - exactly the population MGNREGA was built to serve.

Second, the funding restructuring requires states to cover 40 percent of costs, without prior consultation. States facing this unplanned fiscal burden have little incentive to aggressively expand worksite operations, so even where demand for work exists, supply lags behind.

The Constitutional Question

The Strongest Objection and Why It Doesn't Hold

The government's defence would likely be that digital verification curbs the corruption that plagued MGNREGA for two decades and that early implementation dips are normal for any large administrative transition. Both points have some truth.

But corruption-control measures that simultaneously delete the job cards of genuine claimants aren't solving the fraud problem - they're solving it by excluding legitimate workers alongside fraudulent ones, which is a different and worse outcome for a scheme whose entire purpose is guaranteeing work to the poorest.

And "early transition dip" doesn't explain a sustained decline across a full half-year comparison, nor does it explain why the floor wage was set below an official committee's own recommendation from eight years earlier.

TAN's Reading

The guarantee in "guaranteed employment" only means something if the state actually provides work when demanded. On the evidence available after one month, VB-GRAM G has widened the guarantee on paper while narrowing it in practice - through exclusionary technology, an underfunded mandate and a funding shift that looks difficult to reconcile with Article 258.

Calling this an enhancement doesn't survive contact with the government's own numbers.