The broken promise of the right to work

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By putting an arbitrary cap on funds for the VB-GRAM G Act and not linking it with minimum wages, the very notion of employment guarantee stands delegitimised | Photo Credit: L.

BALACHANDAR

On August 21, a three-judge Supreme Court Bench led by the Chief Justice of India dismissed a petition and sought a fresh one in a case on minimum wages in rural employment guarantee programmes.

The Bench lauded MGNREGA’s role in rural development.

It probed whether the ‘Right to Work’ should be treated on par with Article 21, the fundamental right to life, sparking an important discussion on the constitutional foundations of this right.

Despite its limited scope of only 100 days of work per rural household and chronic underfunding, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was the only law anchored in the core principle of the right to work.

In December 2025, the Union government replaced MGNREGA with the Viksit Bharat — Guarantee for Rozgar & Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-GRAM G) Act, and its implementation began on July 1.

About 3.44 crore households worked for about 44 crore person-days under MGNREGA in July and August, on average, over the previous five years (Table 1).

There has been a 68% decrease in employment in July and August this year compared with the average of the preceding five years.

Notwithstanding the proverbial ‘teething issues’, the dismantling of MGNREGA’s demand-driven right-to-work framework and the disproportionate fiscal burden that the new law places on States are likely to be major factors behind the dramatic fall in employment under the VB-GRAM G Act.

The impact of taking away even this limited right to work is therefore palpable.

Discussions around the recent Supreme Court observations on the right to work can be traced back to the Constituent Assembly debates.

While most members agreed that a right to work was vital, the debate rested on whether it should be a fundamental right or be part of the Directive Principles of State Policy (DPSP).

The DPSPs do not automatically constitute rights but are meant to serve as precepts for governments to formulate laws and policies.

This became the basis of the differences in perspective.

Professor K.T.

Shah had strongly advocated recognising the right to work as a fundamental right, arguing that the State needed a constitutional and positive legal mandate to guarantee socio-economic security to its citizens.

Dr.

B.R.

Ambedkar, among others, held that while the right to work was an essential goal, its immediate universal enforcement was not fiscally and institutionally viable in a newly independent India that had been hollowed out of its resources.

The placement of the right within the Directive Principles, rather than among the fundamental rights, thus reflected a deliberate constitutionalism of aspiration, rather than an abandonment of the welfare ideal.

As scholars Anjani Kapoor and Manu Bhagwan have written in their essay ‘Ambedkar and the anti-isolation of Fellowship’, “The constitution does not establish the nation, but rather provides the tools to help achieve it.”

Therefore, Article 41 of the DPSP states: ‘The State shall, within the limits of its economic capacity and development, make effective provision for securing the right to work…” Embodying stronger progressive consecrations, Articles 39, 42 and 43 call for the “right to an adequate means of livelihood, equal pay for equal work for both men and women, just and humane conditions of work” and to “secure to all workers a living wage and decent standard of life.”

The Supreme Court, in Olga Tellis vs Bombay Municipal Corporation (1985), ruled that the right to livelihood was a necessary condition for the fundamental right to life, giving a judicial fillip to the right to work.

Spurred by the collective efforts of activists and rural workers, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act was passed in 2005.

Although limited in scope, it made a pan-India right-to-work law a reality for the first time.

The State had to ensure its statutory obligation to provide employment at minimum wages.

In 2009, MGNREGA wages were delinked from the Minimum Wages Act, 1948.

Over time, MGNREGA wages barely kept pace with inflation and continued to remain lower than the minimum agricultural wages in most States.