The President of India has given assent to the Viksit Bharat—Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB—G RAM G) Bill, 2025 marking a significant milestone in the transformation of rural employment policy.

The Act enhances the statutory wage employment guarantee to 125 days per financial year for rural households and seeks to advance empowerment, inclusive growth, convergence of development initiatives and saturation-based delivery, thereby strengthening the foundation for a prosperous, resilient and self-reliant Rural Bharat.

Earlier, Parliament passed the Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill, 2025, marking a decisive reform in India’s rural employment and development framework. The Act replaces the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005 with a modern statutory framework that enhances livelihood security and is aligned with the national vision of Viksit Bharat @2047.

Anchored in the principles of empowerment, growth, convergence and saturation, the Act seeks to transform rural employment from a standalone welfare intervention into an integrated instrument of development. It strengthens income security for rural households, modernises governance and accountability, and links wage employment with the creation of durable and productive rural assets, thereby laying the foundation for a prosperous and resilient Rural Bharat.

Salient Features of the Act

Enhanced Statutory Employment Guarantee

• The Act provides a statutory guarantee of not less than 125 days of wage employment per rural household in each financial year to households whose adult members volunteer to undertake unskilled manual work (Section 5(1)).
• This enhancement over the earlier 100-day entitlement significantly strengthens livelihood security, predictability of work, and income stability for rural households, while also enabling them to contribute more effectively and meaningfully to national development.

Balanced Provision for Agriculture and Rural Labour

• To facilitate adequate availability of agricultural labour during peak sowing and harvesting seasons, the Act empowers States to notify an aggregated pause period aggregating to sixty days in a financial year (Section 6).
• The full 125-day employment guarantee remains intact, to be provided during the remaining period, ensuring a calibrated balance that supports both agricultural productivity and worker security.

Timely Wage Payments

• The Act mandates payment of wages on a weekly basis or, in any case, within fifteen days of completion of work (Section 5(3)). In cases of delay beyond the stipulated period, delay compensation shall be payable in accordance with the provisions laid down in Schedule II, reinforcing wage security and protecting workers from delays.

Employment Linked with Productive Rural Infrastructure

Wage employment under the Act is explicitly aligned with the creation of durable public assets across four priority thematic domains (Section 4(2) read with Schedule I):

1. Water security and water-related works
2. Core rural infrastructure
3. Livelihood-related infrastructure
4. Works to mitigate extreme weather events

All works are planned through a bottom-up process, and all assets created are aggregated into the Viksit Bharat National Rural Infrastructure Stack, ensuring convergence of public investments, avoidance of fragmentation, and outcome-based planning aimed at saturation of critical rural infrastructure, based on varying local needs.

Decentralised Planning with National Convergence

• All works originate from Viksit Gram Panchayat Plans (VGPPs), prepared at the Gram Panchayat level through participatory processes and approved by the Gram Sabha (Sections 4(1)–4(3)).
• These plans are digitally and spatially integrated with national platforms, including PM Gati Shakti, enabling whole-of-government convergence while fully retaining decentralised decision-making.
• This integrated planning framework will enable Ministries and Departments to plan and implement works more effectively, avoid duplication and wastage of public resources, and accelerate development through saturation-based outcomes.

Reformed Financial Architecture

• The Act is implemented as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme, to be notified and operationalised by the State Governments in accordance with the provisions of the Act.
• The cost-sharing pattern is 60:40 between the Centre and States, 90:10 for North Eastern and Himalayan States, and 100% central funding for Union Territories without legislatures.
• Funding is provided through State-wise normative allocations based on objective parameters prescribed in the Rules (Sections 4(5) and 22(4)), ensuring predictability, fiscal discipline, and sound planning, while fully preserving statutory entitlements to employment and unemployment allowance.