Women farmers’ group flags exclusion and job loss risks in VBGRAMG Bill

By A Representative 

Mahila Kisan Adhikar Manch (MAKAAM), a national platform of women farmers and rural workers, has strongly condemned the Union government for introducing and passing the Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Grameen) Bill, 2025 (VBGRAMG), describing it as anti-women, anti-worker and anti-poor, and terming it a “deathblow” to rural livelihoods. 

In a statement, the organisation said the Bill was passed without adequate consultation and without incorporating the voices of those most affected, marking a decisive shift from a rights-based employment guarantee to a discretionary, budget-constrained scheme.

MAKAAM highlighted that women form the backbone of Indian agriculture, with nearly 80 percent of rural women workers engaged in the sector, largely as unpaid family labour, sharecroppers or agricultural labourers on small and marginal farms. The organisation noted that for many of these women, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was not merely a welfare scheme but a legal right that allowed them access to paid work within their villages, enabling financial independence while balancing household responsibilities. 

It pointed out that more than 75 percent of women workers are either self-employed or unpaid helpers and continue to earn 20–30 percent less than men in agriculture, underscoring deep-rooted economic inequality.

According to MAKAAM, at a time when rural wages have stagnated or declined over the past decade, MGNREGA played a crucial role as a bargaining tool for women workers. The platform argued that by transforming a demand-driven programme into a supply-driven model, the VBGRAMG Bill would reinforce entrenched rural power structures and weaken women’s negotiating capacity in the labour market. 

It also emphasised that under the 2005 Act, women participated actively in planning and decision-making through Gram Sabhas, helping prioritise works such as water conservation, pond restoration and land development that supported sustainable and climate-resilient livelihoods. The replacement of this framework, the statement said, dismantles one of the few institutional spaces that enabled rural women’s agency in local governance.

The organisation further drew attention to what it described as technocratic exclusions that have already affected women workers in recent years, particularly due to digitised attendance systems and Aadhaar-linked payment mechanisms, which have resulted in large-scale exclusions because of poor connectivity and administrative failures in rural areas. 

Instead of addressing these issues, MAKAAM said, the new law introduces provisions that would further marginalise women, including a 60-day suspension period for work during peak agricultural seasons, centralised budget caps that effectively end the right to work once allocations are exhausted, and a 60:40 funding split that would place an additional financial burden on states, leading to fewer workdays and delayed wage payments.

MAKAAM warned that rural women farmers and workers are among the most vulnerable sections of the population in terms of food and nutrition security and accused successive governments of courting their votes while ignoring their voices in policymaking. The platform has appealed to the President of India to withhold assent to the VBGRAMG Bill and restore the legal employment guarantee under MGNREGA. 

It has also demanded that the government strengthen rural employment provisions by devolving greater planning powers to Gram Panchayats, ensuring payment of at least minimum wages directly to women without exclusionary technological barriers, and expanding access to quality rural employment in keeping with the stated goals of a “Viksit Bharat”.

Calling the passage of the Bill a betrayal, a representative of the platform said that millions of women who have worked the land for generations would not accept a system that converts a hard-won legal right into a discretionary state benefit.