New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi Thursday claimed that the Modi government’s objectives in repealing MGNREGA are the same as they were in bringing the “three black farm laws”, and urged workers to take a cue from farmers and stand united to demand the rollback of the VB-G RAM G Act.
Addressing the National MGNREGA Workers’ Convention organised by the Rachnatmak Congress, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said the concept of MGNREGA was to give rights to the poor.
Workers from across the country participated in the convention, bringing a fistful of soil from their work sites that was put in plants as a symbolic gesture in the presence of Gandhi and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.
“The MGNREGA movement is a big opportunity for the poor people who believe in the Constitution and the idea of India, that if they stand together, (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi ji will back off and MGNREGA would be reinstated,” Gandhi said at the event that was attended by Congress general secretaries Jairam Ramesh and K C Venugopal, as well as Rachnatmak Congress chairperson Sandeep Dikshit, among others.
“The thinking behind it was that anyone in need of work could demand work with dignity. MGNREGA was run through the third tier of the system – the Panchayati Raj system. MGNREGA had the voice of the people, their rights, poor people were given the right to work, a concept which Narendra Modi-BJP is now trying to finish off,” Gandhi alleged.
Recalling the farm laws brought by the Modi government in 2020 and repealed the next year, Gandhi said a few years ago, the BJP had attacked farmers.
“The Modi government had brought in black laws against farmers, which the farmers managed to stop. I remember, in Parliament and in the streets, along with farmers, we put pressure on the government and got those laws repealed,” he said.
Gandhi claimed that the same concept that the government applied to farmers, it is now trying to do on workers.
The idea is that the central government in Delhi will decide how much money to send to which state, Gandhi said and claimed that more money will go to BJP-ruled states and less to opposition-ruled states.
“The central government alone will decide when and where work will happen, and how much wages a worker will get. The rights of workers have been finished, and what workers used to get will now go to the contractors and bureaucracy,” the former Congress chief claimed.
Gandhi alleged that all the policies of the BJP are aimed at concentrating the country’s wealth and property in the hands of a chosen few, and that those same people should run this country.
“The BJP’s ideology is that all the country’s wealth should go into the hands of the rich, so that the poor, mostly Dalits, OBC, and tribal people, become dependent on rich people like Adani-Ambani and obey their word, and if they don’t, then they die hungry,” he said.
Gandhi pointed out that in the last Lok Sabha election, he had stated that the BJP is attacking the Constitution.
“Farm laws were an attack on the Constitution, so was demonetisation, flawed GST. What is the name of this new law ….I don’t know,” he said, with some in the audience responding with the VB-G RAM G acronym.
The former Congress chief said the idea of the BJP is to finish off the Constitution, democracy and the concept of “one person-one vote”.
“These people want to bring back the India of pre-independence, where one King used to decide everything, had all the assets and did as he pleased. Their intention is not to stop because they want to change the structure of modern India,” Gandhi alleged.
“There is only one way to stop them, workers have been shown the way by farmers. If we stand together unitedly, they are cowardly people…I know them well; they are cowardly, and if we stand together, you can decide the name of the scheme and its modalities. But there is one shortcoming, and that is of unity,” he said.
“Poor people don’t stand together, but will have to now. The MGNREGA movement is a big opportunity for the poor people who believe in the Constitution and the idea of India, if they stand together, Modi ji will back off, and MGNREGA would be reinstated,” he said.
The Congress launched ‘MGNREGA Bachao Sangram’, a 45-day nationwide campaign against the repeal of the UPA-era Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), January 10.
The opposition party is demanding the withdrawal of the Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Act and restoration of MGNREGA as a rights-based law in its original form, the right to work and the authority of panchayats.