VB-G RAM G
Act No. 36 of 2025
Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rojgar & Ajeevika Mission (Grameen)
[VB-G RAM G] Act, 2025
Key Provisions and Features of the Act
1. Increase in Working Days (125 Days Guarantee)
While MGNREGA previously guaranteed a maximum of 100 days of employment per financial year, the new Act has increased it to 125 days. This ensures greater financial security and income for rural families.
2. Special 'Pause' Provision for the Agricultural Sector
To ensure adequate availability of laborers for sowing and harvesting, states can declare a temporary pause of 60 days in total per year for the scheme during harvest/sowing seasons. This ensures that workers will receive their 125 days of work within the remaining 305 days.
3. Timely Wage Payment and Unemployment Allowance
- Wages must be paid directly into the account via DBT within a maximum of two weeks after closing the muster roll upon completion of works.
- If employment cannot be provided within 15 days of demanding work, the state government is liable to pay an unemployment allowance along with a compensation at the rate of 0.05% for each day of delay.
4. Technology and Transparency
- Fake workers and irregularities are completely prevented through biometric authentication and mandatory eKYC.
- Accurate GPS tracking, drone monitoring, and AI-based planning are incorporated.
- The social auditing system led by Gram Sabhas has been strengthened.
5. Fund Sharing Pattern
This scheme is implemented as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme in collaboration with the states. Funds are allocated in a 60:40 ratio for normal states, and with a higher central share for North-Eastern and Himalayan states.
🏗️ Four Priority Verticals
The scheme focuses on 4 main areas to create durable rural assets:
Wage Rate in Kerala and Key Sections of the Act
Key Sections of the Act
Deals with the title of the Act and the date it comes into force nationwide.
Specifies the frameworks and systems to be prepared by state governments to implement this scheme.
Explains how projects should be planned from the grassroots level. All works must be initiated through the 'Viksit Gram Panchayat Plan' and will later be linked to the national level Viksit Bharat National Rural Infrastructure Stack.
This section legally guarantees 125 days of unskilled employment to every rural household in a financial year.
A unique provision granting states the power to pause the scheme for a total of 60 days in a year to resolve the shortage of agricultural laborers during key harvest/sowing seasons.
Deals with the relaxations to be provided in working days during natural disasters or other emergencies.
Empowers the central government to revise and notify the daily wages payable to workers (The wage for Kerala was fixed at ₹401 under this section).
Stipulates how funds should be shared between the Central and State governments. It is implemented as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme.