A section of farmer unions, while welcoming provisions such as a break in public works during peak sowing and harvesting seasons, is pushing for a more fundamental rethink
Farmer organisations are split over the newly-enacted G RAM G law that has replaced the two-decade-old MGNREGA framework, but a key strand of opinion is emerging from the farm sector: the programme should be leveraged to lower farmers’ input costs while simultaneously guaranteeing minimum wages for agricultural labourers.
A section of farmer unions, while welcoming provisions such as a break in public works during peak sowing and harvesting seasons, is pushing for a more fundamental rethink. Their demand is that agricultural operations on farmers’ fields be brought within the ambit of job work under the new law, allowing MGNREGA-style employment to directly support farm productivity.
Articulating this view, Abhimanyu Kohar, a leader of Samyukt Kisan Morcha (non-political), said farmers had long demanded a halt to MGNREGA works during critical farm periods because of acute labour shortages in agriculture. “We now want to go a step further. The government should notify agricultural work on farmers’ fields as eligible job work under the new law,” he said. Such a linkage, he argued, would ease labour availability while reducing the overall cost of cultivation.
Manual harvesting
Kohar pointed to the recently harvested basmati crop in Haryana to underline the problem. This season, the cost of manual harvesting rose so sharply that Pusa 1121 paddy fetched ₹4,100–4,200 per quintal when manually harvested, compared with ₹3,100–3,200 per quintal when harvested by combine. “Earlier, the difference between manually and machine-harvested crop used to be ₹200–300 per quintal. This year it jumped to nearly ₹1,000,” he said, reflecting the scarcity and rising cost of farm labour.
Under the proposed linkage, Kohar explained, the government would pay labourers the notified minimum wage, while farmers would top up the difference between that wage and the prevailing market rate for agricultural work in many northern states. This, he said, would marginally reduce farmers’ cost of production, protect minimum wages for labourers, and potentially improve farm profitability.
Private farmland
The demand to include agricultural activities under MGNREGA or its successor is not new and has been raised earlier by parliamentary panels as well. Successive governments, however, resisted the idea, citing administrative and monitoring challenges associated with allowing public employment works on private farmland.
At the other end of the spectrum are unions that are outright opposed to the new framework. The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), formed during the 2020 agitation against the now-repealed farm laws and currently a diminished collective after several groups exited, has called for a complete rollback of the new legislation. On December 26, 2025, the SKM appealed to the President to restore and strengthen MGNREGA and repeal the VB-G RAM G law. It has also joined hands with central trade unions to observe an “All India Resistance Day” on January 16 against the legislation.
The government last month repealed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, and replaced it with the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, which was passed in Parliament by voice vote amid protests from the Opposition. As the debate sharpens, the fault line among farmer organisations is clear: while some reject the law outright, others see scope for recalibrating it to support farm economics without undermining wage security for rural labour.
Published on January 9, 2026
