A globally unique programme allowed the poor to demand \u2013 and get \u2013 jobs, empowering rural women. Narendra Modi courts trouble by hollowing it out<\/p>\n
Few countries have attempted anything as ambitious as India\u2019s rural jobs guarantee. Under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act<\/a>, any adult in the countryside who demanded work was entitled to a job on local public works within 15 days, failing which the government had to pay an unemployment allowance. Enacted in 2005, MGNREGA created the world\u2019s most far-reaching legal right to employment. It generates 2bn person-days of work a year for about 50m households. Over half of all workers were women, and about 40% came from Dalit and tribal communities.<\/p>\n For a country where vast numbers rely on seasonal farm work, the scheme mattered. It stabilised incomes, raised rural wages, expanded women\u2019s bargaining power and reduced internal migration. Households could demand up to 100 days of paid work at a statutory minimum wage, turning employment into an enforceable right. The World Bank<\/a> derided it as a \u201cbarrier to development\u201d in 2009 \u2013 but praised it as \u201cstellar\u201d five years later. India\u2019s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has however replaced this rights-based system with a centrally managed welfare scheme, VB-G RAM G, a shift opposed by<\/a> the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and the inequality scholar Thomas Piketty.<\/p>\n