Skip to main content

"Model" Gujarat worst paymaster to rural workers: Has highest gap between NREGA wage and minimum wage rate

Figures culled by the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) Sangharsh Morcha, India’s top civil rights group fighting for strict implementation of India’s premier rural guarantee scheme, floated by the UPA government in 2005, have revealed that Gujarat is the worst pay master, highest highest gap among 20 major Indian states between officially declared minimum wages and NREGA wages.
As against the officially stipulated minimum wages in Gujarat, Rs 298, NREGA workers in the state are paid, on an average, Rs 192 per day, suggesting that the difference between what they should be paid and what they are actually paid is a whopping Rs 106 for a day’s work, which is the highest in the country.
While there are two major states – Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu – where the MREGA workers are paid “more” than their minimum wages, all other Indian states end up paying up less-than-minimum wages under the rural guarantee scheme.
The scheme -- acclaimed by the World Bank in 2013 as “innovative practice” to promote financial inclusion, a U-turn from its earlier view that it was “barrier to economic development” – provides a legal guarantee for 100 days of employment in every financial year to adult members of any rural household, willing to do public work-related unskilled manual work.
Ironically, the two states “paying” more under NREGA, have kept their minimum stipulated wages extremely low. Maharashtra’s officially declared minimum wage is Rs 194 as against the payment of Rs 201 for a day’s work under NREGA. Same is the case with Tamil Nadu, where the minimum wage is Rs 195, while the NREGA wage is Rs 205.
The difference between the stipulated minimum wage and NREGA wage is Rs 105 in the case of Andhra Pradesh, where the officially declared minimum wage is 302, while payment under NREGA is Rs 197, followed by Bihar (Rs 69), Assam (Rs 67), Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand (both Rs 62), Punjab (Rs 61), Madhya Pradesh (Rs 58), West Bengal (Rs 54), Uttar Pradesh (Rs 53), and so on.
Bringing this to light, in a letter to Narendra Singh Tomar, Minister of Rural Development, Government of India, NREGA Sangharsh Morcha has regretted that the Centre is “yet to notify the revised wage rates” for NREGA, yet muster rolls for the “next financial year are being issued at the 2017-18 wage rates”.
Pointing out that, currently, NREGA wage rates of all the 29 states and Union Territories are “less than the corresponding minimum wage rates for agricultural work”, and the difference is “greatest in Tripura, where the MGNREGA wage rate is only 58 per cent of the state minimum wage for agriculture”, the letter tells the minister, “This ratio is 59 per cent for Sikkim, 64 per cent for Gujarat and 65 per cent for Andhra Pradesh” (click HERE for table).
The civil rights organization says, “The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld minimum wages as a fundamental right and equated payment of anything less as ‘forced labour’. Unremunerative NREGA wages, coupled with long delays in wage payments – even non-payment of wages in many cases – has turned many rural workers away from the employment guarantee programme.”
Asking the Government of India to immediately come up with a “notification of revised NREGA wage rates for 2018-19”, the letter demands “payment of compensation” calculating the difference between the minimum wages and NREGA wages paid till now, underlining, the NREGA wages should obligatorily be not below minimum wages in 2018-19.
The letter wants "NREGA wage rate to be at least Rs 600 a day, as the Seventh Pay Commission recommends a minimum monthly salary of Rs 18,000”, adding, for this, adequate allocation should be made in the “budget to meet the work demand of all rural households.”

Comments

TRENDING

Trump’s research cuts 'may mean' advantage China: But will India leverage global brain drain to its advantage?

When I heard from a couple of NRI professionals—currently on work visas and engaged in research projects at American universities—that one of President Donald Trump's major policy thrusts was to cut federal funding to the country's top educational institutions, I was instantly reminded of what Prof. Kaushik Basu had said while delivering a lecture in Ahmedabad.

How the middle classes are returning to the BJP fold, be it Delhi or Gujarat: Mahakumbh, Sitharaman's budget

Whatever reasons may be offered for the Aam Aadmi Party's defeat in Delhi—whether it was the BJP's promises of more freebies than AAP, the shedding of ultra-nationalist slogans, or the successful demolition of Arvind Kejriwal's "Mr. Clean" image—my recent interaction with a group of middle-class individuals highlighted a notable trend. Those who had just begun to sit on the fence were now once again returning to the BJP fold.

Google powered AI refuses to correct grammar of a 'balanced' piece on Trump sending chained immigrants to India!

This is a continuation of my blog on how, while the start-up-developed AI app DeepSeek is being criticized for consistently rejecting content related to China or Maoism, there appears to be no mention in Western media about why another app, developed by the powerful Google, Gemini, remains silent on Indian political issues.  

World Hijab Day? Ex-Muslim women observe Feb 1 as No Hijab Day, insist: 'Put it on a Man'

I didn't know that there could ever be a thing as World Hijab Day until I received an email alert from Maryam Namazie of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB), stating that several ex-Muslim women's groups had observed the same day—February 1—as No Hijab Day! According to Namazie, the day "was created on February 1 as a direct response to World Hijab Day" to "illuminate the coercive and oppressive realities of the hijab as a pillar of sex apartheid and a war on women."

How to turn India's e-waste problem, third largest, into opportunity? Simple: Offer industry incentives!

How should one interpret a major problem that may be bogging down a private consultant while preparing an industry-friendly report on a situation that adversely impacts society—especially when the consultant sees little possibility of progress in the supposed desired direction?

A Hindu alternative to Valentine's Day? 'Shiv-Parvati was first love marriage in Universe'

  The other day, I was searching on Google a quote on Maha Shivratri which I wanted to send to someone, a confirmed Shiv Bhakt, quite close to me -- with an underlying message to act positively instead of being negative. On top of the search, I chanced upon an article in, imagine!, a Nashik Corporation site which offered me something very unusual.  I don't know who owns this site, for there is nothing on it in the About Us link. It merely says, the Nashik Corporation  site   "is an educational and news website of the municipal corporation. Today, education and payment of tax are completely online." It goes on to add, "So we provide some of the latest information about Property Tax, Water Tax, Marriage Certificate, Caste Certificate, etc. So all taxpayer can get all information of their municipal in a single place.some facts about legal and financial issues that different city corporations face, but I was least interested in them."  Surely, this didn't intere...

Gujarat a police state? How top High Court advocate stunned a senior-most journalist

Rajdeep Sardesai, Anand Yagnik This is a continuation of my earlier blog on well-known journalist Rajdeep Sardesai's lecture in memory of the late Achyut Yagnik at the Ahmedabad Management Association (AMA). I was a little surprised when I received the intimation about the venue for the lecture.

Why burn Manusmriti? Why not preserve it to demonstrate, display historicity of casteism?

In a significant Facebook post, Rana Singh, former associate professor of English at Patna University, has revealed something that few seem to know. Titled "The Shudras in Manusmriti", Singh says,  because Manusmriti is discussed so often, he thought of reading it himself. “This book likely dates back to the 2nd or 3rd century BCE, and the presence of contradictory statements suggests that it is not the work of a single author,” he says in his Facebook post in Hindi, written in 2022 and recently reshared.

5% poor in India? Union govt claim debunked, '26.4% of population below poverty line'

A recent paper, referring to the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2022-23 of the Government of India (GoI), has debunked the official claim that poverty has substantially declined. Titled "Poverty in India: The Rangarajan Method and the 2022–23 Household Consumption Expenditure Survey", the paper —authored by scholars CA Sethu, LT Abhinav Surya, and CA Ruthu—states that "more than a quarter of India’s population falls below the poverty line."