New Delhi: The Centre has raised wages under the rural job guarantee scheme – by the princely sum of one rupee a day in many states.
The increase is the lowest in the 11-year history of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, and leaves its wage rates in 11 states stuck far below their minimum wages, set by the state governments. The eastern states are the worst hit.
As notified by the Union rural development ministry, the daily wage under the scheme has risen by just Re 1 in Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, by Rs 2 in Odisha and by Rs 4 in Bengal. (See chart)
Till 2008, the job scheme wage had been the same as a state’s minimum wage before the Centre decided to tie the former to the state’s Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPIAL), a measure of the retail inflation faced by farm workers.
The Centre argues that adopting a state’s minimum wage for the scheme would selectively benefit the scheme’s workers in states that raise their minimum wages more often and more sharply than others.
A senior government official today said the average rise in job scheme wages was 2.7 per cent this year because inflation was down, and was the lowest in the eastern states.
Social activist Nikhil Dey said the gulf between the job scheme wage and the minimum wage in some states would have narrowed had the Centre accepted a 2014 recommendation by a committee headed by economist Mahendra Dev.
He said the committee had suggested that the two wage rates be brought on a par in a base year (2014), and the job scheme wages be subsequently revised every year on the basis of the states’ Consumer Price Index for Rural Labourers, which is higher than the CPIAL. "The Supreme Court has said that if a worker is paid less than the state’s minimum wage, it amounts to forced labour," said Dey, who is associated with the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, an organisation working on social security programmes in Rajasthan.
Dey questioned the idea of basing pay revisions solely on inflation rates. He cited the dearness allowance the Centre was paying its employees over and above the 20 per cent hike in salaries recommended by the Seventh Pay Commission.
Ministry officials said the Dev report had been put on hold after the finance ministry objected to the proposal of one-time parity with the states’ minimum wages for a base year. Accepting it would have cost the exchequer an additional Rs 3,000 crore in the first year itself, they said.
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