The Crossbill Team
The Union government is weighing changes to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), including an increase in the number of workdays and a possible renaming of the programme, months after a parliamentary panel pushed for major reforms.
Multiple reports on Friday, December 12, said the Centre is considering raising the guaranteed workdays to 125 a year.
At present, the scheme guarantees 100 days of work on demand in rural areas across most of the country. Earlier this year, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Development and Panchayati Raj had recommended increasing the entitlement to 150 days annually.
The Narendra Modi government is also said to be examining a second renaming of the scheme.
According to a report in The Economic Times on Friday, the proposed change would replace “Mahatma Gandhi” with his popular moniker “Bapu”, meaning father in Hindi, and add “Pujya”, another Hindi word meaning worshipped. If approved, the scheme would be renamed Pujya Bapu Gramin Rozgar Guarantee Yojana (PBGRGY), giving it a mix of Hindi and English words.
When the programme was launched in 2005, it was known as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). The name was later revised by appending “Mahatma Gandhi”, following which the Act itself was renamed the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The scheme subsequently came to be widely known as Narega and later Manrega.
Reports have also suggested that the government may raise the minimum wage paid under the scheme, with a day’s work potentially fetching up to Rs 240. This would still fall well short of the parliamentary committee’s recommendation, which had called for wages of at least Rs 400 a day, along with an independent survey of MGNREGS.
While wages under the scheme vary across states, the Union government fixes a national minimum. A revised wage rate of Rs 370 was introduced in April 2025.
Despite this, issues such as delayed and inadequate payments, deletion of job cards, mandatory technological requirements like Aadhaar-phone linking and OTP-based verification, and the absence of compensation for delayed wages have continued to affect workers, particularly after payments were linked to bank accounts.
Official data from the Union government’s MGNREGA wage dashboard shows that more than 35% of workers under the scheme belong to Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes, and that women account for a higher share of workdays than men. The dashboard also claims that 97.94% of payments were made within 15 days.
These figures have been disputed by workers. In December 2024, MGNREGS labourers protested at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, alleging that the government’s wage payment data was “false”.
They demanded a daily wage of Rs 800, which they said was necessary to support families dependent on the scheme, and also called for year-round availability of work on demand.
Reports on Friday further indicated that the government plans to push greater digitisation under a revamped MGNREGS. However, there has been no official confirmation so far on any of the proposed changes.
Multiple reports on Friday, December 12, said the Centre is considering raising the guaranteed workdays to 125 a year.
At present, the scheme guarantees 100 days of work on demand in rural areas across most of the country. Earlier this year, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Development and Panchayati Raj had recommended increasing the entitlement to 150 days annually.
The Narendra Modi government is also said to be examining a second renaming of the scheme.
According to a report in The Economic Times on Friday, the proposed change would replace “Mahatma Gandhi” with his popular moniker “Bapu”, meaning father in Hindi, and add “Pujya”, another Hindi word meaning worshipped. If approved, the scheme would be renamed Pujya Bapu Gramin Rozgar Guarantee Yojana (PBGRGY), giving it a mix of Hindi and English words.
When the programme was launched in 2005, it was known as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). The name was later revised by appending “Mahatma Gandhi”, following which the Act itself was renamed the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The scheme subsequently came to be widely known as Narega and later Manrega.
Reports have also suggested that the government may raise the minimum wage paid under the scheme, with a day’s work potentially fetching up to Rs 240. This would still fall well short of the parliamentary committee’s recommendation, which had called for wages of at least Rs 400 a day, along with an independent survey of MGNREGS.
While wages under the scheme vary across states, the Union government fixes a national minimum. A revised wage rate of Rs 370 was introduced in April 2025.
Despite this, issues such as delayed and inadequate payments, deletion of job cards, mandatory technological requirements like Aadhaar-phone linking and OTP-based verification, and the absence of compensation for delayed wages have continued to affect workers, particularly after payments were linked to bank accounts.
Official data from the Union government’s MGNREGA wage dashboard shows that more than 35% of workers under the scheme belong to Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes, and that women account for a higher share of workdays than men. The dashboard also claims that 97.94% of payments were made within 15 days.
These figures have been disputed by workers. In December 2024, MGNREGS labourers protested at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, alleging that the government’s wage payment data was “false”.
They demanded a daily wage of Rs 800, which they said was necessary to support families dependent on the scheme, and also called for year-round availability of work on demand.
Reports on Friday further indicated that the government plans to push greater digitisation under a revamped MGNREGS. However, there has been no official confirmation so far on any of the proposed changes.
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