Budget Wish 2026: Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme

Every year, as the Union Budget approaches, we brace ourselves for a barrage of heavy economic terminology—fiscal deficits, GDP targets, and sectoral allocations. But for the average urban Indian, the "health of the economy" is often measured by much simpler metrics: Does the street outside my house flood when it rains? Is the local government school adequately staffed? is the neighborhood clinic clean?

​For too long, the answer to those questions has been a frustrating "no."

​Our cities are the growth engines of India, yet they are groaning under the weight of crumbling infrastructure and under-resourced social services. Simultaneously, we face a persistent challenge of urban unemployment and underemployment, affecting everyone from manual laborers to fresh graduates.

​This Budget season, my primary wishlist item isn't a tax cut or a corporate sop. It is a structural reform that addresses both urban decay and urban joblessness simultaneously: A National Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme (NUEGS).

​It is time to take the transformative logic of rural India's MGNREGA and adapt it for the concrete jungle. But this shouldn't just be about digging ditches. An urban guarantee scheme must be ambitious, targeting the specific pain points of city life—our infrastructure, our health, and the minds of our future generations.

​The Monsoon Proofing Force

​The most visible argument for an urban employment scheme arrives every year with the first heavy rains. Our cities don't just get wet; they paralyze. The annual spectacle of waterlogged arterials, overflowing sewage, and crater-sized potholes is a national embarrassment.

​Currently, our approach is reactive—we patch potholes after an accident and pump water after the flood. An Urban Employment Scheme could create a standing "civic maintenance corps" focused on prevention. Imagine a dedicated workforce mobilized before the monsoon to desilt thousands of kilometers of storm drains, clean urban water bodies, and repair pavements. This isn't just make-work; it is essential climate resilience for our densely packed urban centers.

​The Care Economy: Healing Our Clinics

​We must also expand the definition of "infrastructure" beyond roads and drains to include social infrastructure. Our public healthcare system— government hospitals—are often sites of desperate overcrowding and sanitation issues.

​The scheme should integrate healthcare support roles. We need a dedicated corps for deep cleaning public health facilities, managing patient queues, and assisting the elderly. Crucially, in tropical cities, this workforce could spearhead vector control—conducting anti-larval operations field-by-field to stop dengue and malaria before outbreaks begin. This moves public health from crisis response to community prevention.

​The Bold Step: An "Urban Teaching Corps"

​Perhaps the most transformative potential of an Urban Employment Scheme lies in broadening its scope from manual labor to skilled work, specifically addressing the crisis in education.

​We face a tragic paradox in our cities: high rates of educated unemployment among graduates, coexisting with government schools where classrooms are bursting at the seams and teachers are overburdened with administrative tasks.

​The budget should propose an "Urban Teaching Corps" within the guarantee scheme. This would not replace permanent faculty, but supplement them. Educated unemployed youth could be hired as remedial tutors for students falling behind, as co-curricular instructors for art and sports, or as a substitute pool to keep schools functioning when regular teachers are deputed for election duties.

​This turns a welfare scheme into a human capital investment. It provides dignified, white-collar work near home for graduates while ensuring that a child in a government school gets the individual attention they need.

​A Budget for Urban Dignity

​Critics will ask, "Where will the money come from?" But we must ask, what is the cost of doing nothing? What is the economic loss of a flooded financial capital, or a generation of under-taught students?

​An Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme is not a handout; it is an asset creation program. It puts money directly into the hands of the urban workforce, boosting consumption, while simultaneously repairing the very fabric of our cities.

​This Budget, let’s move beyond piecemeal projects. Let’s wish for a policy that recognizes a simple truth: the dignity of work and the livability of our cities are two sides of the same coin. It’s time we invested in both.

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