Promises and precarity

The Jammu & Kashmir government has made it clear that it has no proposal under consideration to regularise Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) support staff, stating that around 3,800 personnel are currently working purely on a contractual and temporary basis across the Union Territory. The assertion has reopened an old fault line between policy commitments and lived realities. These workers form the backbone of rural employment delivery, ensuring implementation, monitoring, and accountability of one of India’s most significant social security schemes. What sharpens the sense of unease is the political context. During elections, assurances were made that daily wagers and similarly placed workers across the Union Territory would be regularised once the government assumed office. The present assertion, though technically confined to MGNREGA support staff, risks being read as a retreat from those broader promises. For employees who have spent years in insecure service, such signals deepen uncertainty rather than provide clarity. From an administrative standpoint, the government’s caution is understandable. Regularisation has long-term fiscal implications and must align with legal frameworks laid down by courts to prevent backdoor appointments. Yet governance cannot be reduced to legal technicalities alone. A workforce that operates in perpetual insecurity is unlikely to deliver optimal outcomes, particularly in a programme as crucial as MGNREGA, which directly affects rural livelihoods. The challenge, therefore, lies in finding a middle path. If outright regularisation is not feasible, the government must explore alternatives, structured tenure policies, social security coverage, wage protection and transparent pathways for absorption based on experience and performance. Ultimately, credibility is the real issue at stake. Electoral assurances create expectations and governments are judged not only by fiscal prudence but also by their sensitivity to human capital. Jammu and Kashmir’s development agenda will ring hollow if those sustaining its welfare machinery remain trapped in uncertainty.