India’s rural employment guarantee which began in 2005 was largely built around the basic needs of rural India, conserving water, preventing drought, improving irrigation, developing land, controlling floods and connecting villages with roads. Twenty-one years later, its rechristened version has a broader menu.
The new list includes solar lighting, waste-recycling facilities, greywater treatment, cold storage, agro-processing, infrastructure for self-help groups and works to prepare villages for floods, droughts, cyclones and forest fires. To be sure, this does not mean that any of the older works enlisted have been removed. Ponds, canals, check dams, irrigation structures, plantations and rural roads continue to remain a part of the programme.
Its recently revamped version, Viksit Bharat–Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin), or VB–G RAM G, notified 375 permissible works on Tuesday, up 41% from the 266 works under the previous MGNREGA framework.
