India, Dec. 20 -- The Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Aajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill, passed by Parliament on Thursday, reimagines the jobs guarantee regime for rural India that earlier had the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) as its fulcrum. The Opposition parties have protested the change, citing various reasons, including the name-change that they say has ideological underpinnings. What ideologies anchored MGNREGA? Some answers can be found in Politics and the Right to Work, by American academics Rob Jenkins and James Manor. They discuss the strands of political thought that led to the framing of the law, the consultations with a wide spectrum of ideators, the tensions within the ruling dispensation over the law, and also the impact of the programme on panchayat politics. How the feedback from the ground shaped the larger political discourse around jobs as a "right" is also discussed....