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Story summary
- India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), created in 2005, guarantees rural adults a right to employment.
- It generated about 2 billion person-days of work annually and supported roughly 50 million households.
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi's new welfare scheme, VB-G RAM G, centralizes control and limits funding.
- Critics, including economists Joseph Stiglitz and Thomas Piketty, warn the shift heightens rural distress and concentrates accountability.
