A Sardonic Critique of the VB-G RAM G and SHANTI Bills and the Art of Governing by Dilution
Introduction: When Reform Means Subtraction with Better Fonts
The NDA government’s legislative imagination in its third term appears animated by a single, unifying philosophy: everything must change, especially the names, while the burden quietly shifts downward. Under the grand banner of Viksit Bharat @2047, a vision document so elastic that it can accommodate almost any policy rollback as “reform,” the government has begun dismantling two of independent India’s most consequential frameworks—rural employment guarantees and nuclear liability protections—while insisting that the dismantling itself is progress.
Enter two emblematic bills: the Viksit Bharat–Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill (VB-G RAM G) and the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India Bill (SHANTI). Together, they seek to replace the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005, and substantially rewrite the logic of the Atomic Energy Act, 1962, and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act (CLND), 2010.
On paper, both bills are sold as modernisation exercises. One promises more employment days; the other promises more clean energy. In practice, both represent a familiar pattern: convert enforceable rights into administratively rationed schemes, and convert public risk into private profit—underwritten, naturally, by the taxpayer.
The VB-G RAM G and SHANTI Bills do not merely reform legacy laws; they redefine the relationship between the Indian state and its citizens, shifting from obligation to discretion, from accountability to opacity, and from precaution to calculated exposure. What is being dismantled is not inefficiency, but democratic friction itself.
MGNREGA: A Law That Refused to Ask Permission from the Treasury
MGNREGA, enacted in 2005, was not merely a welfare programme; it was a constitutional provocation. By guaranteeing 100 days of wage employment as a legal right, it inverted the traditional hierarchy of Indian development policy. Instead of citizens pleading for work, the state became legally obligated to provide it—or pay an unemployment allowance.
Its defining features were deliberately inconvenient to administrators.
At the heart of MGNREGA lay a design that was deliberately resistant to bureaucratic convenience. Employment was demand-driven, meaning work had to be provided whenever rural households asked for it, rather than being rationed through pre-fixed quotas or budgetary ceilings decided in distant offices. This legal entitlement was reinforced by the provision of an unemployment allowance, payable if work was not offered within 15 days, turning administrative delay into a financial liability for the state rather than a silent punishment for workers. Transparency and accountability were embedded through mandatory social audits conducted by Gram Sabhas, which allowed local communities to scrutinise muster rolls, spending, and asset creation in open forums, making corruption politically and socially costly. Crucially, the scheme rested on near-total central funding of wages, recognising the unequal fiscal capacities of Indian states and ensuring that a worker’s right to employment did not depend on the solvency or political priorities of their state government. Together, these features made MGNREGA not just a welfare programme, but a rights-based architecture that compelled the state to respond to distress rather than manage it away.
MGNREGA’s impact was uneven but undeniable. It became a counter-cyclical stabiliser, expanding during droughts, economic slowdowns, and most dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, when rural distress surged and demand for work reached historic highs. Female labour participation under the scheme hovered near 50%, partly due to worksite facilities like crèches and proximity to villages.
Importantly, MGNREGA’s greatest sin was not inefficiency but stubbornness. It refused to shrink quietly during fiscal consolidation cycles. It demanded money when the economy faltered. It embarrassed governments that preferred infrastructure ribbon-cuttings to wage payments.
VB-G RAM G: The Promise of More, Delivered Through Less
The VB-G RAM G Bill claims to improve upon MGNREGA by increasing the employment guarantee from 100 to 125 days, indexing wages to inflation, streamlining payments through digital platforms, and integrating works with flagship infrastructure and housing schemes. On the surface, it reads like a benevolent upgrade.
The catch—revealed only after the applause—is structural.
VB-G RAM G abolishes the demand-driven nature of employment and replaces it with a budget-normative model. In plain language, work will now be provided up to the limits of pre-approved allocations, not up to the limits of human need. The right to work quietly becomes the possibility of work, contingent on fiscal comfort.
This is not a minor procedural tweak; it is the conceptual burial of MGNREGA’s rights-based core. Without guaranteed funding tied to demand, the legal obligation evaporates. The scheme survives, but the right does not.
Federalism by Invoice: States Pick Up the Bill
MGNREGA’s financing model—100% central funding for wages—was a recognition of unequal state capacities. VB-G RAM G dismantles this logic by imposing a Centre–State cost-sharing formula for wages, materials, and administration.
For fiscally stressed states, especially those with high rural poverty or limited revenue bases, this is not decentralisation; it is cost transfer. States are now expected to either finance shortfalls or quietly restrict access. Predictably, implementation will vary wildly, deepening inter-state inequality while allowing the Centre to claim success in aggregate numbers.
The omission of unemployment allowance further erodes accountability. Under MGNREGA, delayed work meant financial penalties for the state. Under VB-G RAM G, delay simply means silence.
Technology as Alibi
VB-G RAM G leans heavily on Aadhaar-linked job cards, real-time attendance systems, and centralised dashboards. Efficiency is the selling point; exclusion is the side effect.
Experience from multiple welfare schemes shows that authentication failures, biometric mismatches, and digital illiteracy disproportionately affect the elderly, women, and migrant workers. Under a rights-based law, such exclusions could be challenged. Under a scheme, they become “implementation issues.”
Even social audits—MGNREGA’s most radical transparency mechanism—are diluted into administrative reviews conducted by district officials. The Gram Sabha, once a watchdog, is demoted to an audience.
The Politics of Renaming
Removing “Mahatma Gandhi” from the law’s title is more than symbolic housekeeping. It reflects a deeper ideological discomfort with rights-bearing citizenship associated with the UPA era. VB-G RAM G does not merely replace a programme; it reframes poverty as a logistical problem rather than a political obligation.
The result is a scheme that promises more days but delivers fewer guarantees—a familiar paradox in contemporary Indian governance.
SHANTI: Nuclear Power, Now with Optional Accountability
India’s nuclear governance architecture was intentionally conservative. The Atomic Energy Act centralised control under the state to prevent proliferation risks, while the CLND Act—crafted amid intense debate—sought to balance foreign investment with victim protection.
The CLND’s most controversial feature was supplier liability. Section 17(b) allowed operators to seek recourse from suppliers in cases of defective equipment or services. Section 46 preserved victims’ rights to pursue additional claims under other laws.
These provisions made foreign suppliers uncomfortable. They also made Indian citizens marginally safer.
SHANTI: Safety Streamlined for Investor Confidence
The SHANTI Bill promises a nuclear renaissance—100 GW by 2047, small modular reactors, private participation, and alignment with global climate goals. To achieve this, it does something radical: it removes the legal irritants that scared investors away.
Supplier liability is no longer statutory; it is contractual. If a supplier negotiates immunity—and powerful suppliers always do—victims have no recourse. The tort gateway of Section 46 quietly disappears, replaced by capped liability and government-funded compensation pools.
In effect, risk is socialised, profit is privatised, and accountability is negotiable.
Private Operators, Public Consequences
Allowing private and joint-venture entities to build and operate nuclear reactors marks a philosophical shift. Nuclear energy is no longer an exceptional domain demanding extraordinary caution; it becomes another investment opportunity, complete with viability-gap funding and regulatory flexibility.
The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board is granted statutory status, but remains institutionally tethered to the same executive ecosystem it is meant to regulate. Independence, it seems, is largely semantic.
India’s nuclear accident history is limited not because the risks are low, but because expansion has been slow. SHANTI accelerates capacity while weakening deterrence, a combination that history—from Bhopal to Fukushima—suggests is unwise.
Climate Goals as Cover
Nuclear energy’s contribution to India’s power mix remains modest compared to renewables, whose capacity expansion has been far faster and cheaper. Yet nuclear enjoys a rhetorical premium because it allows policymakers to appear climate-conscious without confronting fossil fuel dependencies or distributional energy access issues.
SHANTI leverages climate urgency to justify liability dilution. The planet must be saved, we are told, even if the villagers near reactor sites must accept capped compensation and limited legal remedies.
Conclusion: Reform Without Responsibility
The VB-G RAM G and SHANTI Bills are not aberrations; they are expressions of a governing philosophy that prefers administrative flexibility over legal obligation, market comfort over citizen security, and narrative triumph over institutional memory.
VB-G RAM G transforms a constitutional aspiration—the right to work—into a fiscally managed programme whose generosity fluctuates with budget arithmetic. SHANTI transforms nuclear governance from a precautionary regime into a facilitative one, where safety is assumed, liability is capped, and the state stands ready as insurer of last resort.
Both laws share a common impulse: remove friction, whether that friction is a rural worker demanding employment or a citizen demanding accountability after a disaster.
If Viksit Bharat means development without rights, growth without guarantees, and reform without responsibility, then these bills are indeed visionary. But history suggests that nations are not ultimately judged by how efficiently they attract capital or rename schemes, but by how steadfastly they protect their most vulnerable when the spreadsheets fail.
True reform evolves institutions; it does not hollow them out and repaint the façade.
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