VB-GRAM G: India's Rural Employment Guarantee Needs More Than Tech Promises

The Central government has situated the Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (VB-GRAM G) Act, 2025 as an attempt to modernise the erstwhile MGNREGA. To do so, VB-GRAM G provides the legal basis for using technology-enabled systems in the implementation of the scheme. It envisages an app and a dashboard that records demand for work, work done, workforce deployment, payments, progress, and other indicators. The government claims that technological solutions in the VB-GRAM G can overcome pre-existing problems with MGNREGA, such as insufficient funds, large-scale deletion of job cards due to Aadhaar mismatches, complicated payment systems, and corruption. We show, while echoing concerns raised by other civil society organisations like LibTech India, that the incorporation of technology-based systems as the default approach to administering the substantive right to work under VB-GRAM G, enables centralisation, weakens social audits, and transparency and accountability mechanisms. Together, these changes have been made through a techno-solutionist lens, while completely frustrating the right to work guaranteed by the MGNREGA scheme. 'Jobs' vs 'Employment': How Govt Switches Terms to Hide Reality of Job CreationThis systemic dilution of the employment guarantee is achieved through the following changes made under VB-GRAM G. First, the proposed works drawn by the Gram Panchayats under the Viksit Gram Panchayat Plans are to be drawn exclusively from PM Gati Shakti, GIS-based tools, and other digital public infrastructure. This suggests a planning architecture in which the proposed works sought to be accomplished by the employment guarantee are filtered through top-down thematic and technological criteria, raising questions about the purported “bottom-up” approach of the VB-GRAM G and the substantive autonomy of local institutions in selecting the proposed works.The governance structure established under VB-GRAM G also consolidates central influence.The National Level Steering Committee is the relevant body that will advise on standards, guidelines, monitoring systems, and the digital and geospatial public infrastructure necessary to implement the new scheme. It prioritises digital reporting of wage payments, geo-tagging, digital recording, and management information system reporting as central administrative functions. While doing this, it shifts significant responsibility for technological implementation, troubleshooting, and compliance onto state and local officials. However, this is done without specific mechanisms for capacity building, training, or financial support to state and local officials.G RAM G Bill Diminishes Job Guarantee: Centralisation Tramples FederalismSecond, social audits and transparency mechanisms under MGNREGA played an important role in overcoming the control that intermediaries had over information. In the social audit process, village resource persons and block resource persons check muster rolls along with payment slips and verify the worksite for the project undertaken under the scheme.These door-to-door visits helped keep a check on any discrepancies or irregularities. Such social audits have helped uncover issues arising in receipt of payments by beneficiaries due to lack of technical knowledge.Upon completion of the social audit in all Gram Panchayats, a public hearing is organised where discrepancies such as misappropriation, process violations, and financial irregularities are highlighted. Redressal measures would include warnings, penalties, or suspension of the concerned officers. Finally, the social audit concludes with entering the data online. This social audit played a crucial role in the effective operation of the MGNREGA. As such, the social audit process under MGNREGA faced several challenges, namely, withholding of funds and lack of trained personnel, which have led to poor monitoring of MGNREGA schemes in many states.Until social audit rules are notified under the law, the pre-existing social audit process will continue. VB-GRAM G purportedly strengthens social audit by requiring a range of measures to ensure transparency and accountability. This includes biometric authentication of workers, use of mobile app and dashboard-based monitoring systems providing real-time visibility of demand, works, workforce deployment, payments, progress of work, and weekly public disclosure systems, including digital and physical disclosure of key metrics, muster rolls, payments, sanctions, inspections and grievances. Streamlining the social audit mechanism through digital tools will not alleviate the funding or staffing challenges faced by the current social audit mechanism.Moreover, the new law’s ability to administer the scheme through dashboards and apps is contingent on the digital literacy and comfort levels of officers overseeing the scheme, and the workers for whose benefit the scheme is introduced.A Parliamentary Standing Committee report dated 2 April 2025 has already flagged serious concerns over the reliability of the National Mobile Monitoring System App, introduced in May 2021, and the use of which is likely to continue under VB-GRAM G, to record attendance for MGNREGA workers using twice-daily geo-tagged photographs. Given poor network connectivity in many rural areas, technical shortcomings have led to wage delays and denials, undermining workers’ entitlements. VB-GRAM G also indicates that it will enable the use of AI for planning, audits, and fraud risk mitigation. However, barring a broad mention of “technology-enabled” planning or systems, there is not sufficient indication of where AI is likely to be deployed.Low Funds, Pending Dues, No Work: How Govt Crippled MGNREGA Before Renaming ItThird, the VB-GRAM G mandates public disclosure through digital systems and village-level displays. Disclosures must include digital and physical publication of employment days, wage and material payments, guarantees, works approved under the Viksit Gram Panchayat Plan, year-wise works undertaken or completed, labour demand, material utilisation, and physical progress. Despite the breadth of these provisions, VB-GRAM G does not sufficiently indicate the specificity with which such disclosures will be made. It is uncertain whether the transparency regime will resemble the MGNREGA model, where detailed and itemised data was routinely published, allowing civil society groups to conduct independent scrutiny.Rather than addressing known failures under MGNREGA, the new law risks amplifying these issues by strengthening central discretion and reducing flexibility at the implementation level. The introduction of VB-GRAM G without any stakeholder consultations, and the cumulative effect of centralised planning, digitally intensive monitoring, and discretionary rule-making, risks displacing accountability away from people and institutions towards systems and platforms.(Indumugi C and Shinjini Bigharia work at the Internet Freedom Foundation. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author's own. The Quint does not endorse or is responsible for them.)

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VB-GRAM G: India's Rural Employment Guarantee Needs More Than Tech Promises

The government has claimed that tech solutions in the VB-GRAM G can overcome pre-existing problems with MGNREGA.

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Topics: MGNREGA Rural Employment schemes