'Employment guarantee now': Rural workers take to streets on May Day

By A Representative 

Rural workers across India observed International Workers' Day on May 1 with demonstrations in multiple states, demanding that the government restore employment guarantees even as the flagship MGNREGA scheme is being wound down and its announced replacement remains non-operational.

Protests were reported from Bheem in Rajasthan, Manika in Jharkhand, Araria in Bihar, Sitapur and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Karnataka, among other states. The demonstrations come at a particularly fraught moment for India's rural poor — real wages in rural areas have stagnated over the last decade according to Labour Bureau data, and the economic disruption triggered by the US attack on Iran has sent large numbers of migrant workers heading home in search of employment that may no longer exist.

The NREGA Sangharsh Morcha, a coalition that has been spearheading the resistance, said the central government is effectively abandoning rural workers at the worst possible time. "The Central Government is busy depriving them of their main crisis lifeline: employment guarantee. On the one hand, the government is dismantling MGNREGA. On the other, it is holding VB-GRAMG in abeyance," the organisation said.

While MGNREGA has not yet been formally repealed, its operational collapse is already visible on the ground. In many states, obtaining new Job Cards, accessing employment, or getting permission to open new worksites has become extremely difficult. In Muzaffarpur, Bihar, thousands of workers staged a dharna for 100 continuous days demanding MGNREGA work, with little result. Uttar Pradesh has seen a complete halt in the generation of new work, while Karnataka officials have offered only verbal assurances — with no legal or financial guarantee — that work will continue for six more months under the MGNREGA framework. West Bengal has seen no resumption of work at all, and Bihar's panchayats have refused to open new worksites, restricting employment to a handful of ongoing projects.

The data tells the same story. According to MGNREGA MIS figures accessed on April 30, persondays of work generated collapsed from 27 crore in April 2025 to just 6 crore in April 2026 — a fall of nearly 80 percent in a single year, following the passage of the GRAMG Act.

The government's proposed replacement scheme, VB-GRAMG, has compounded the crisis rather than resolved it. Despite repeated official announcements that it would be launched on April 1, 2026, the Act is yet to be notified. State-wise financial allocations remain undisclosed, making it impossible for states to plan implementation. The NREGA Sangharsh Morcha said "confusion reigns supreme" and described the situation as one of "widespread administrative confusion regarding the rollout of VB-GRAMG, and reports of officials refusing to accept work applications or initiate new projects."

The Morcha directly contradicted the Ministry of Rural Development's April 18 press release, which had claimed a "smooth and uninterrupted" continuation of MGNREGA during the transition. The organisation said the data showed "drastically reduced persondays compared to the previous year and significant pending wage liabilities," amounting to "a de facto disruption that is depriving millions of rural households of their statutory right to guaranteed wage employment."

Adding to workers' grievances, the central government also failed for the first time to notify the inflation-linked annual increment in MGNREGA wages at the close of 2025-26, meaning money wages this year are no higher than last year.

Resistance has been building since December 2025. On February 2, marking the 20th anniversary of MGNREGA, the NREGA Sangharsh Morcha coordinated "Mazdoor Mahapanchayats" and rallies in state capitals including Ranchi, Bengaluru, Jaipur, and Hyderabad, while hundreds of workers from Haryana gathered at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi.

On May Day, the Morcha also announced the launch of the Save MGNREGA website, which it described as "a central platform documenting ongoing protests, memorandums, and developments around MGNREGA and the VB Gramg Act, along with campaign resources, parchas, and workers' testimonies." The organisation called on unions, civil society groups, and supporters to use the platform for media outreach and to share state-level updates.