Farmers have shown the way to workers, poor must unite to bring back MGNREGA: Rahul
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on 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Recalling the farm laws brought by the Modi government in 2020 and repealed the next year, Gandhi said a few years ago, the BJP had attacked farmers.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I remember, in Parliament and in the streets, along with farmers, we put pressure on the Government and got those laws repealed,” he said.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.
