New law will eliminate workers’ rights, contractors and bureaucrats will be empowered = Rahul Gandhi
The Sunday Mail
New Delhi: Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, called upon the country’s workers to unite and fight for the restoration of the MNREGA law, just as the farmers did against the three controversial farm laws. They also assured that the entire Congress party stands with the workers and will fight from Parliament to the streets to restore MNREGA to its original form.
The Congress leaders were addressing MNREGA workers from across the country at the ‘National MNREGA Workers’ conference organized by ‘Rachnatmak Congress’ at Jawahar Bhawan in Delhi on Thursday. Hundreds of MNREGA workers and activists from various states protested against the VB Gram G law introduced by the Modi government in place of MNREGA.
Mallikarjun Kharge said that the Modi government, through the new law, is going to turn the poor into bonded laborers again and hand them over to the rich so that they work according to their will. He said that MNREGA was not just an employment scheme, but a law connected to the dignity and rights of rural poor, Dalits, backward classes, and weaker sections. He said that this is the first time that any government has dared to remove the name of the Father of the Nation from a scheme named after him. Ending MNREGA is not just an attack on the weaker sections, but a conspiracy to attack Gandhiji’s vision of Gram Swaraj (village self-rule).
Highlighting the steps taken by the Modi government in recent years to weaken the MNREGA scheme, the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Kharge, said that millions of workers have been removed from the list under the pretext of complications like digital attendance and Aadhaar-based payment systems. He said that the minimum wage has not been linked to the inflation index. The government has also failed to guarantee 100 days of employment, and today, on average, only 40-45 days of work are being provided, while now there is talk of providing 125 days of work. He described it as an attempt to mislead the poor and said that under the new law, they wouldn’t even get work for two months a year.
Kharge further stated that laws like MNREGA, Food Security, Right to Education, and Right to Information, implemented during the UPA government, were praised worldwide, but the current government is weakening them. He sarcastically remarked that Prime Minister Narendra Modi doesn’t understand the suffering of poverty; he is surrounded only by wealthy people. He expressed apprehension that in the future, this government might move towards granting voting rights only to the rich.
Meanwhile, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi launched a scathing attack, saying that MNREGA was being run through the Panchayati Raj system, and its core principle was to give the poor the right to dignified employment. But the government wants to abolish this concept of rights. The MNREGA scheme guaranteed work to every poor person, but now the Modi government is trying to bring it under a centralized system through a new law, where Delhi will decide how much money each state and district will receive.
The senior Congress leader apprehended that under the new system, BJP-ruled states would receive more funds, and opposition-ruled states would receive less. He also warned that the rights of laborers would be curtailed, and contractors and bureaucrats would become even more powerful.
Rahul Gandhi said that the three farm laws, demonetization, the flawed GST, and now the new law replacing MNREGA – all are part of an attempt to weaken the Constitution. He said the government’s goal is to concentrate all the country’s wealth and assets in the hands of a select few capitalists like Adani and Ambani so that Dalits, tribals, OBCs, and the poor become completely dependent on them. He said that the BJP wants to abolish the Constitution, democracy, and the one-person-one-vote system to bring back a pre-independence era of princely rule. He appealed to the laborers to unite, saying that the BJP people are cowards. If the poor people of India stand together, the Prime Minister will have to back down.
The conference began with a resounding song of justice. In a symbolic gesture, workers brought soil from their respective MGNREGA worksites, which was collected to convey a message of unity and collective struggle.
Congress General Secretary (Organization) K.C. Venugopal, General Secretary in-charge of Communications Jairam Ramesh, Chairman of the Constructive Congress Sandeep Dikshit, Charanjit Singh Channi, Udit Raj, and other senior leaders were present on the occasion. During the event, Shashikant Senthil, Saptagiri Ulaka, and K. Raju shared their views on the implications of the new law.
