NREG wage hike is stuck because NAC fighting PMO by Ravish Tiwari

A notification expected on January 1 to hike wages of workers under the national job guarantee scheme — to counter inflation — is stuck because of pressure from National Advisory Council activists who want this hike to be linked to the Minimum Wages Act.

The Rural Development Ministry was slated to notify revised NREGS wages indexing it to the Consumer Price Index for agricultural labourers (CPI-AL) with April 2009 as the base.

Wages would then have gone up by an average 22.5 per cent across the country — from Rs 100 to Rs 120 per day in Bihar; from Rs 141 to Rs 179 in Haryana. The formula was arrived at after consultations with the Finance Ministry and on December 31, the PM apprised NAC chairperson Sonia Gandhi of this in a letter.

But NREGS activists who think this is “perpetuation of forced labour,” want wages to be linked to the Minimum Wages Act, in the hope that states will be more generous in raising the minimum wage. Among those pushing this are NAC members Aruna Roy and Jean Dreze.

They have a reason to.

This month, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot raised minimum wage from Rs 100 to Rs 135 — whereas the CPI-AL formula would have raised it to about Rs 120 per day. However, Gehlot indicated that the revised minimum wage won’t be applicable to NREGS workers.

For the record, Rural Development Ministry officials cited procedural reasons for the delay in notification, and said “it is likely to come out sometime soon”.