‘Delhi’s dictatorship’: Congress accuses Modi govt of tweaking MGNREGA norms

The Opposition Congress on Tuesday accused the Narendra Modi-led NDA government of “tweaking” the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme, calling the move “dictatorship from Delhi”.

In a social media post on X, Congress MP Manickam Tagore claimed that the Modi government has quietly tweaked the MGNREGA norms and reallocated 60 per cent of the scheme’s funds to “water-related” projects.

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“The Modi government has quietly tweaked MGNREGA norms — forcing 60% of all funds to go into “water-related” projects. Sounds good? Wait till you see what this really means. MGNREGA was meant to give poor rural families guaranteed work — building whatever their village needed: roads, houses, ponds, schools. Now Delhi decides from above how it must spend it. That’s not decentralisation. That’s dictatorship from Delhi,” Tagore said.

As per the Congress leader, the move will strip away the Gram Sabha’s power as villages will not be able to decide their priorities.

“The entire spirit of MGNREGA — people’s planning, bottom-up development — has been sabotaged. Even worse, this is not about saving water. It’s about saving the government’s face. After years of ignoring the groundwater crisis, they now want to show “big numbers” before 2029,” he said.

Citing a media report, the Congress MP claimed that after the tweaks, Rs 35,000 crore of MGNREGA funds will be redirected to projects chosen for PR headlines and not people’s needs.

He further stated that while the wages of MGNREGA workers are unpaid, job cards are inactive, and work demand has been suppressed, the scheme has been twisted to serve the most powerful.

‘From “Make in India’ to ‘Dig Wells for BJP’s Image’ — every welfare scheme is being repackaged for propaganda. This is what happens when governance becomes a photo-op factory. MGNREGA once empowered the poorest. Today, it’s being twisted to serve the most powerful. Water is life — but forced centralisation is political drought,” the Congress MP added.

Launched in 2006 by the then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, the MGNREGA scheme provides a legal guarantee of at least 100 days of wages to the adult member of a rural household who volunteers for unskilled manual labour.