A continued property market slowdown and a vegetable glut may have pushed landless labourers back to villages, seeking daily jobs and depressing wage growth
India’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth looks set to cruise along the 7-7.5 percent trail, partly aided by steady farm incomes and record harvests on the back of plentiful summer rains over the last three years.
But it may still be early to open the bubbly yet. The headline expansion rates may well be masking a rather worrying trend sprouting in the fields. Over the last three-and-a-half years rural wages have crawled at rates barely enough to cover rising cost of living in the countryside.
During November 2014 to April this year (the latest for which data is available), the average daily wages for land tillers have outpaced rural retail inflation rates by just 0.23 percent.
In 22 of these 42 months, the ‘real’ or inflation-adjusted daily wage growth for ploughing and tilling workers was negative, implying their income grew at a pace slower than the inflation rate.
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