India, Dec. 28 -- The Punjab cabinet's move to recommend a one-day special session of the Vidhan Sabha on December 30 to oppose the Centre's new rural employment law -VB-G RAM G (Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission Gramin) - is politically predictable. The law replaces the guarantee-based architecture of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, and the state's protest carries obvious symbolic weight. But symbolism is not governance. Once Parliament has altered the national framework, the harder and more consequential question is what room, if any, states retain to shape outcomes on the ground. A resolution cannot repeal a central statute. But it need not be meaningless. States can still shape outcomes - through litigation, fiscal choices, complementary state laws in their own domains, and better administration. Punjab's test is whether it uses these levers, or merely stages a blame game while parties trade credit for the original right-to-work legislation. Public debate has been dragged into the naming controversy - dropping the "Mahatma Gandhi" epithet - when the more consequential shift lies elsewhere. VB-G RAM G is being projected as an upgrade: 125 days instead of 100, quicker wage payments and a sharper focus on durable assets and measurable "outcomes". Yet the core issue is whether the guarantee remains demand-driven, or becomes an administratively rationed entitlement. In a rights-based model, a worker's demand triggers a duty on the state. In a scheme-based model, allocations and ceilings - however "objective"- tend to decide how much work is possible on the ground. Add greater compulsory state co-funding, and incentives can invert: cash-strapped states begin to "manage" demand by slowing sanctions, narrowing works, or delaying payments. A guarantee can then survive in the statute book but weaken in delivery. Those of us who entered service in the 1980s remember rural employment programmes as welfare - mediated through local administration and, often, through local hierarchies. The UPA-era shift in 2005 was different in kind: NREGA (later MGNREGA) made employment a statutory, demand-led entitlement, aligned with the 73rd Amendment's promise of local planning, social audits, and transparency. The NDA decade reshaped the programme's plumbing. Direct electronic wage credit reduced sarpanch-centred patronage; app-based attendance and geo-tagging tightened the muster-measurement-payment chain. But digitisation also created a new vulnerability: authentication failures, seeding errors and administrative deletions can exclude precisely those who need the safety net. Discretion reduced at the village gate can reappear at the database gate. Punjab is about 2.3% of India's population, yet in 2024-25, it generated roughly 309 lakh person-days - about 1.1% of the national total - and received about 1.5% of the national wage-fund releases. This is not an argument to shrink the scheme. It is a reminder that it functions as a narrow but critical floor for the most vulnerable. If Punjab's 2024-25 person-days were fully utilised at 100 days per household, they would cover only about 3.1 lakh households - roughly 5-6% of Punjab's households. In other words, the scheme's reach is modest, but it targets the thin edge of distress where a missed wage or a delayed payment can tip a household into debt. Start with federal litigation, not floor speeches. If the redesign shifts disproportionate financial or administrative burdens to states, Punjab should pursue a tightly drafted Centre-state challenge - preferably with a coalition of states - to secure judicial clarity on funding responsibility, allocation logic, and enforceable worker protections. Next, legislate within state domains. Punjab cannot contradict a central Act, but it can enact a state "top-up" for additional employment days and works in areas of clear state competence-minor irrigation, water conservation, village commons, rural sanitation, panchayat infrastructure, local roads and community assets-while mandating a ready shelf of works and time-bound grievance redress. Third, treat the wage gap as a design problem, not a perennial complaint. For FY 2025-26, Haryana's notified wage is Rs.400 per day while Punjab's is Rs.346. If Punjab believes this depresses uptake and dignity, it should pilot a targeted, time-bound state top-up-notify its own upward revision close to that of Haryana's-rather than merely writing ritualistic letters to Delhi. Fourth, prevent rationing-by-treasury. If the new architecture increases Punjab's financial exposure, the state must avoid "managing" demand by delaying sanctions, slowing measurements, or holding back payments. A modest, ring-fenced stabilisation buffer-linked to quarterly demand signals-can prevent the familiar collapse where employment exists on paper but disappears in the accounts office. Finally, fix delivery end-to-end with published timelines and safeguards. No state posture works if workers are deterred by procedural friction. Punjab should commit to measurable timelines for work allocation after demand, muster closure, wage processing and grievance disposal-and publish compliance. It should retain the gains of direct payments and monitoring that reduced local patronage, but add worker protections: facilitation for seeding/authentication problems, offline fallbacks where needed, and clear appeals against blocked or deleted accounts. Punjab's special session should close with one disciplined test: does VB-G RAM G preserve the worker's ability to compel the State to provide work (and compensation when it fails), or does it mainly preserve the State's ability to manage work within a capped, co-funded envelope set from above? In our opinion, if the answer is the latter, then the politics of "renaming" is a sideshow. The deeper story is a quiet centralisation of power-wrapped, as always, in the rhetoric of decentralisation and empowerment....