Viksit Bharat Rozgar–Ajeevika (Gramin) Act, 2025

Viksit Bharat Rozgar–Ajeevika (Gramin) Act, 2025: The President’s assent to the “Viksit Bharat — Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025” is important. It marks a significant shift. It changes India’s rural employment architecture. The law has expanded the statutory employment guarantee to 125 days. It has embedded livelihood security within a broader framework of asset creation and productivity. This has triggered an intense political and policy debate.

Critics argue that decentralisation and demand-based rights have been diluted and that fiscal consolidation is being packaged as reform. However, a closer reading of the Act suggests that these concerns stem from a misreading of its design. There is also a misunderstanding of its intent, rather than its actual provisions.

What Viksit Bharat Rozgar–Ajeevika (Gramin) Act, 2025 Changes

At its core, the Act retains the justiciable right to wage employment while expanding entitlements. The guaranteed number of workdays has been raised from 100 to 125. This change directly addresses long-standing demands from rural households. These households face climate stress, agrarian uncertainty, and seasonal underemployment.

Importantly, the law removes procedural bottlenecks that historically undermined the unemployment allowance. In practice, delays in work allocation and administrative ambiguities often rendered this allowance meaningless. The new framework tightens timelines and strengthens time-bound grievance redress mechanisms, reducing the gap between statutory promise and on-ground delivery.

The Act aims to strengthen enforceability. It seeks to make the employment guarantee operationally credible. It ensures that administrative failure is no longer used to deny workers their legal rights.

Why the ‘Welfare vs Development’ Debate Misses the Point

A major strand of criticism relies on an outdated binary that treats welfare and development as competing objectives. The new Act explicitly rejects this framing. It positions wage employment, durable asset creation, agricultural stability and long-term productivity as parts of a single continuum.

The intent is not limited to providing income during distress periods. Instead, the programme links employment with the creation of productive rural assets. These include water conservation structures, soil management works, and climate-resilient infrastructure. Such assets can strengthen livelihoods over time. In this sense, the Act reframes rural employment from a short-term safety net into a foundation for sustainable rural growth.

Livelihood Security Beyond Wage Employment

A key conceptual shift lies in the explicit integration of “Ajeevika” (livelihood) within the statutory framework. The Viksit Bharat Rozgar–Ajeevika (Gramin) Act, 2025 recognises that employment security cannot be divorced from productivity enhancement. It aligns works with local agricultural cycles, natural resource management, and skill-based activities. This alignment aims to stabilise incomes beyond the duration of wage payments.

This approach reflects lessons from implementation experience. Regions that invested employment funds in durable, locally relevant assets showed better resilience. They were more resilient to droughts, floods, and economic shocks. The new law attempts to scale this logic nationally.

Decentralisation and Accountability in Practice

The Act preserves the role of local institutions in planning and execution. It strengthens accountability through clearer standards and monitoring. This is contrary to claims of centralisation. The focus is on outcomes. This approach addresses a persistent criticism. Procedural compliance often overshadowed real asset quality and employment delivery.

The law aims to reinforce grievance redress and clarify administrative responsibilities. It seeks to rebalance decentralisation with accountability. This ensures that local discretion does not translate into local denial of rights.

Why the Viksit Bharat Rozgar–Ajeevika (Gramin) Act, 2025 Matters Going Forward

The Viksit Bharat Rozgar–Ajeevika (Gramin) Act, 2025 signals a move away from viewing rural employment as an isolated welfare intervention. Instead, it embeds it within a broader development strategy aimed at resilience, productivity and dignity of work.

Whether the law succeeds will ultimately depend on implementation capacity, fiscal commitment and administrative discipline. As a policy design, it tries to move beyond the welfare-versus-growth debate. It leans towards a more integrated vision of rural transformation.