Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Code Context


        trigger_error($message, E_USER_DEPRECATED);

    }
$message = 'The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php.'
$stackFrame = (int) 1
$trace = [
	(int) 0 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ServerRequest.php',
		'line' => (int) 2421,
		'function' => 'deprecationWarning',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => 'The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead.'
		]
	],
	(int) 1 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php',
		'line' => (int) 73,
		'function' => 'offsetGet',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\ServerRequest',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => 'catslug'
		]
	],
	(int) 2 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Controller/Controller.php',
		'line' => (int) 610,
		'function' => 'printArticle',
		'class' => 'App\Controller\ArtileDetailController',
		'object' => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => []
	],
	(int) 3 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php',
		'line' => (int) 120,
		'function' => 'invokeAction',
		'class' => 'Cake\Controller\Controller',
		'object' => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => []
	],
	(int) 4 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php',
		'line' => (int) 94,
		'function' => '_invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 5 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/BaseApplication.php',
		'line' => (int) 235,
		'function' => 'dispatch',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 6 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\BaseApplication',
		'object' => object(App\Application) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 7 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php',
		'line' => (int) 162,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 8 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware',
		'object' => object(Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 9 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php',
		'line' => (int) 88,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 10 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware',
		'object' => object(Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 11 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php',
		'line' => (int) 96,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 12 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware',
		'object' => object(Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 13 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 51,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 14 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Server.php',
		'line' => (int) 98,
		'function' => 'run',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\MiddlewareQueue) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 15 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/webroot/index.php',
		'line' => (int) 39,
		'function' => 'run',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Server',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Server) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => []
	]
]
$frame = [
	'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php',
	'line' => (int) 73,
	'function' => 'offsetGet',
	'class' => 'Cake\Http\ServerRequest',
	'object' => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {
		trustProxy => false
		[protected] params => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] data => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] query => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] cookies => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] _environment => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] url => 'latest-news-updates/nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-by-sreelatha-menon-4099/print'
		[protected] base => ''
		[protected] webroot => '/'
		[protected] here => '/latest-news-updates/nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-by-sreelatha-menon-4099/print'
		[protected] trustedProxies => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] _input => null
		[protected] _detectors => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] _detectorCache => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] stream => object(Zend\Diactoros\PhpInputStream) {}
		[protected] uri => object(Zend\Diactoros\Uri) {}
		[protected] session => object(Cake\Http\Session) {}
		[protected] attributes => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] emulatedAttributes => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] uploadedFiles => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] protocol => null
		[protected] requestTarget => null
		[private] deprecatedProperties => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
	},
	'type' => '->',
	'args' => [
		(int) 0 => 'catslug'
	]
]
deprecationWarning - CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311
Cake\Http\ServerRequest::offsetGet() - CORE/src/Http/ServerRequest.php, line 2421
App\Controller\ArtileDetailController::printArticle() - APP/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line 73
Cake\Controller\Controller::invokeAction() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 610
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51
Cake\Http\Server::run() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 98

Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Code Context


        trigger_error($message, E_USER_DEPRECATED);

    }
$message = 'The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php.'
$stackFrame = (int) 1
$trace = [
	(int) 0 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ServerRequest.php',
		'line' => (int) 2421,
		'function' => 'deprecationWarning',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => 'The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead.'
		]
	],
	(int) 1 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php',
		'line' => (int) 74,
		'function' => 'offsetGet',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\ServerRequest',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => 'artileslug'
		]
	],
	(int) 2 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Controller/Controller.php',
		'line' => (int) 610,
		'function' => 'printArticle',
		'class' => 'App\Controller\ArtileDetailController',
		'object' => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => []
	],
	(int) 3 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php',
		'line' => (int) 120,
		'function' => 'invokeAction',
		'class' => 'Cake\Controller\Controller',
		'object' => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => []
	],
	(int) 4 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php',
		'line' => (int) 94,
		'function' => '_invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 5 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/BaseApplication.php',
		'line' => (int) 235,
		'function' => 'dispatch',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 6 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\BaseApplication',
		'object' => object(App\Application) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 7 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php',
		'line' => (int) 162,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 8 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware',
		'object' => object(Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 9 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php',
		'line' => (int) 88,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 10 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware',
		'object' => object(Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 11 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php',
		'line' => (int) 96,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 12 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware',
		'object' => object(Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 13 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 51,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 14 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Server.php',
		'line' => (int) 98,
		'function' => 'run',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\MiddlewareQueue) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 15 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/webroot/index.php',
		'line' => (int) 39,
		'function' => 'run',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Server',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Server) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => []
	]
]
$frame = [
	'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php',
	'line' => (int) 74,
	'function' => 'offsetGet',
	'class' => 'Cake\Http\ServerRequest',
	'object' => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {
		trustProxy => false
		[protected] params => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] data => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] query => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] cookies => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] _environment => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] url => 'latest-news-updates/nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-by-sreelatha-menon-4099/print'
		[protected] base => ''
		[protected] webroot => '/'
		[protected] here => '/latest-news-updates/nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-by-sreelatha-menon-4099/print'
		[protected] trustedProxies => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] _input => null
		[protected] _detectors => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] _detectorCache => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] stream => object(Zend\Diactoros\PhpInputStream) {}
		[protected] uri => object(Zend\Diactoros\Uri) {}
		[protected] session => object(Cake\Http\Session) {}
		[protected] attributes => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] emulatedAttributes => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] uploadedFiles => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] protocol => null
		[protected] requestTarget => null
		[private] deprecatedProperties => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
	},
	'type' => '->',
	'args' => [
		(int) 0 => 'artileslug'
	]
]
deprecationWarning - CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311
Cake\Http\ServerRequest::offsetGet() - CORE/src/Http/ServerRequest.php, line 2421
App\Controller\ArtileDetailController::printArticle() - APP/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line 74
Cake\Controller\Controller::invokeAction() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 610
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51
Cake\Http\Server::run() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 98

Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Code Context
            if (Configure::read('debug')) {

                trigger_error($message, E_USER_WARNING);

            } else {
$response = object(Cake\Http\Response) {

	'status' => (int) 200,
	'contentType' => 'text/html',
	'headers' => [
		'Content-Type' => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
	],
	'file' => null,
	'fileRange' => [],
	'cookies' => object(Cake\Http\Cookie\CookieCollection) {},
	'cacheDirectives' => [],
	'body' => '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <link rel="canonical" href="https://im4change.in/<pre class="cake-error"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-trace').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-trace').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none');"><b>Notice</b> (8)</a>: Undefined variable: urlPrefix [<b>APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp</b>, line <b>8</b>]<div id="cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-trace" class="cake-stack-trace" style="display: none;"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-code').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-code').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Code</a> <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-context').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-context').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Context</a><pre id="cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-code" class="cake-code-dump" style="display: none;"><code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"></span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">head</span><span style="color: #007700">&gt;
</span></span></code>
<span class="code-highlight"><code><span style="color: #000000">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;link&nbsp;rel="canonical"&nbsp;href="<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">Configure</span><span style="color: #007700">::</span><span style="color: #0000BB">read</span><span style="color: #007700">(</span><span style="color: #DD0000">'SITE_URL'</span><span style="color: #007700">);&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$urlPrefix</span><span style="color: #007700">;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">category</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">slug</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>/<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">seo_url</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>.html"/&gt;
</span></code></span>
<code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">meta&nbsp;http</span><span style="color: #007700">-</span><span style="color: #0000BB">equiv</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"Content-Type"&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">content</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"text/html;&nbsp;charset=utf-8"</span><span style="color: #007700">/&gt;
</span></span></code></pre><pre id="cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-context" class="cake-context" style="display: none;">$viewFile = &#039;/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp&#039;
$dataForView = [
	&#039;article_current&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

		&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 4009,
		&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon&#039;,
		&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/font&gt;
&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The implementation of NAC&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
		&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;Sify News, 31 October, 2010, http://sify.com/finance/sreelatha-menon-nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-news-analysis-kk5akmjiafg.html&#039;,
		&#039;article_img&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;article_img_thumb&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;status&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
		&#039;show_on_home&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
		&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;EN&#039;,
		&#039;category_id&#039; =&gt; (int) 16,
		&#039;tag_keyword&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;seo_url&#039; =&gt; &#039;nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-by-sreelatha-menon-4099&#039;,
		&#039;meta_title&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;meta_keywords&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;meta_description&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;noindex&#039; =&gt; (int) 0,
		&#039;publish_date&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
		&#039;most_visit_section_id&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;article_big_img&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;liveid&#039; =&gt; (int) 4099,
		&#039;created&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		&#039;modified&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		&#039;edate&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;tags&#039; =&gt; [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		&#039;category&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
		&#039;[new]&#039; =&gt; false,
		&#039;[accessible]&#039; =&gt; [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		&#039;[dirty]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[original]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[virtual]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[hasErrors]&#039; =&gt; false,
		&#039;[errors]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[invalid]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[repository]&#039; =&gt; &#039;Articles&#039;
	
	},
	&#039;articleid&#039; =&gt; (int) 4009,
	&#039;metaTitle&#039; =&gt; &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon&#039;,
	&#039;metaKeywords&#039; =&gt; &#039;NREGS&#039;,
	&#039;metaDesc&#039; =&gt; &#039;


Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s largest workforce of close...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;font &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;&lt;font &gt;Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The implementation of NAC&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;English&#039;,
	&#039;SITE_URL&#039; =&gt; &#039;https://im4change.in/&#039;,
	&#039;site_title&#039; =&gt; &#039;im4change&#039;,
	&#039;adminprix&#039; =&gt; &#039;admin&#039;
]
$article_current = object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

	&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 4009,
	&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon&#039;,
	&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/font&gt;
&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The implementation of NAC&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;Sify News, 31 October, 2010, http://sify.com/finance/sreelatha-menon-nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-news-analysis-kk5akmjiafg.html&#039;,
	&#039;article_img&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;article_img_thumb&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;status&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
	&#039;show_on_home&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
	&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;EN&#039;,
	&#039;category_id&#039; =&gt; (int) 16,
	&#039;tag_keyword&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;seo_url&#039; =&gt; &#039;nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-by-sreelatha-menon-4099&#039;,
	&#039;meta_title&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;meta_keywords&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;meta_description&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;noindex&#039; =&gt; (int) 0,
	&#039;publish_date&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
	&#039;most_visit_section_id&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;article_big_img&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;liveid&#039; =&gt; (int) 4099,
	&#039;created&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	&#039;modified&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	&#039;edate&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;tags&#039; =&gt; [
		(int) 0 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {}
	],
	&#039;category&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
	&#039;[new]&#039; =&gt; false,
	&#039;[accessible]&#039; =&gt; [
		&#039;*&#039; =&gt; true,
		&#039;id&#039; =&gt; false
	],
	&#039;[dirty]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[original]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[virtual]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[hasErrors]&#039; =&gt; false,
	&#039;[errors]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[invalid]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[repository]&#039; =&gt; &#039;Articles&#039;

}
$articleid = (int) 4009
$metaTitle = &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon&#039;
$metaKeywords = &#039;NREGS&#039;
$metaDesc = &#039;


Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s largest workforce of close...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;font &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;&lt;font &gt;Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The implementation of NAC&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
$lang = &#039;English&#039;
$SITE_URL = &#039;https://im4change.in/&#039;
$site_title = &#039;im4change&#039;
$adminprix = &#039;admin&#039;</pre><pre class="stack-trace">include - APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8
Cake\View\View::_evaluate() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1413
Cake\View\View::_render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1374
Cake\View\View::renderLayout() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 927
Cake\View\View::render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 885
Cake\Controller\Controller::render() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 791
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 126
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51</pre></div></pre>latest-news-updates/nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-by-sreelatha-menon-4099.html"/>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
    <link href="https://im4change.in/css/control.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
          media="all"/>
    <title>LATEST NEWS UPDATES | NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon | Im4change.org</title>
    <meta name="description" content="


Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&acirc;&euro;&trade;s largest workforce of close..."/>
    <script src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-1.10.2.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-migrate.min.js"></script>
    <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">

        $(document).ready(function () {
            var img = $("img")[0]; // Get my img elem
            var pic_real_width, pic_real_height;
            $("<img/>") // Make in memory copy of image to avoid css issues
                .attr("src", $(img).attr("src"))
                .load(function () {
                    pic_real_width = this.width;   // Note: $(this).width() will not
                    pic_real_height = this.height; // work for in memory images.
                });
        });
    </script>
    <style type="text/css">
        @media screen {
            div.divFooter {
                display: block;
            }
        }

        @media print {
            .printbutton {
                display: none !important;
            }
        }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="98%" align="center">
    <tr>
        <td class="top_bg">
            <div class="divFooter">
                <img src="https://im4change.in/images/logo1.jpg" height="59" border="0"
                     alt="Resource centre on India's rural distress" style="padding-top:14px;"/>
            </div>

        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td id="topspace">&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>

    <tr id="topspace">
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td height="50" style="border-bottom:1px solid #000; padding-top:10px;" class="printbutton">
            <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page "
                         onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form>
        </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td width="100%">
            <h1 class="news_headlines" style="font-style:normal">
                <strong>NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon</strong></h1>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td width="100%" style="font-family:Arial, 'Segoe Script', 'Segoe UI', sans-serif, serif"><font size="3">
                <font ><br /></font><div align="justify"><font >Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&acirc;&euro;&trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.</font><br /><br /><font >In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.</font><br /><br /><font >The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.</font><br /><br /><font >The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.</font><br /><br /><font >Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?</font><br /><br /><font >The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.</font><br /><br /><font >The implementation of NAC&acirc;&euro;&trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&acirc;&euro;&trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.</font><br /><br /><font >At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.</font><br /><br /><font >According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.</font><br /><br /><font >The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.</font><br /><br /><font >The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.</font><br /><br /><font >The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.</font><br /><br /><font >Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.</font><br /><br /><font >NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.</font><br /><br /><font >It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.</font><br /><br /><font >Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.</font><br /><br /></div>               </font>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td height="50" style="border-top:1px solid #000; border-bottom:1px solid #000;padding-top:10px;">
            <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page "
                         onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table></body>
</html>'

}
$maxBufferLength = (int) 8192
$file = '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php'
$line = (int) 853
$message = 'Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853'
Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emit() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48
Cake\Http\Server::emit() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 141
[main] - ROOT/webroot/index.php, line 39

Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Code Context
            $response->getStatusCode(),

            ($reasonPhrase ? ' ' . $reasonPhrase : '')

        ));
$response = object(Cake\Http\Response) {

	'status' => (int) 200,
	'contentType' => 'text/html',
	'headers' => [
		'Content-Type' => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
	],
	'file' => null,
	'fileRange' => [],
	'cookies' => object(Cake\Http\Cookie\CookieCollection) {},
	'cacheDirectives' => [],
	'body' => '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <link rel="canonical" href="https://im4change.in/<pre class="cake-error"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-trace').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-trace').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none');"><b>Notice</b> (8)</a>: Undefined variable: urlPrefix [<b>APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp</b>, line <b>8</b>]<div id="cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-trace" class="cake-stack-trace" style="display: none;"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-code').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-code').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Code</a> <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-context').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-context').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Context</a><pre id="cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-code" class="cake-code-dump" style="display: none;"><code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"></span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">head</span><span style="color: #007700">&gt;
</span></span></code>
<span class="code-highlight"><code><span style="color: #000000">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;link&nbsp;rel="canonical"&nbsp;href="<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">Configure</span><span style="color: #007700">::</span><span style="color: #0000BB">read</span><span style="color: #007700">(</span><span style="color: #DD0000">'SITE_URL'</span><span style="color: #007700">);&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$urlPrefix</span><span style="color: #007700">;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">category</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">slug</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>/<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">seo_url</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>.html"/&gt;
</span></code></span>
<code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">meta&nbsp;http</span><span style="color: #007700">-</span><span style="color: #0000BB">equiv</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"Content-Type"&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">content</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"text/html;&nbsp;charset=utf-8"</span><span style="color: #007700">/&gt;
</span></span></code></pre><pre id="cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-context" class="cake-context" style="display: none;">$viewFile = &#039;/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp&#039;
$dataForView = [
	&#039;article_current&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

		&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 4009,
		&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon&#039;,
		&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/font&gt;
&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The implementation of NAC&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
		&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;Sify News, 31 October, 2010, http://sify.com/finance/sreelatha-menon-nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-news-analysis-kk5akmjiafg.html&#039;,
		&#039;article_img&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;article_img_thumb&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;status&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
		&#039;show_on_home&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
		&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;EN&#039;,
		&#039;category_id&#039; =&gt; (int) 16,
		&#039;tag_keyword&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;seo_url&#039; =&gt; &#039;nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-by-sreelatha-menon-4099&#039;,
		&#039;meta_title&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;meta_keywords&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;meta_description&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;noindex&#039; =&gt; (int) 0,
		&#039;publish_date&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
		&#039;most_visit_section_id&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;article_big_img&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;liveid&#039; =&gt; (int) 4099,
		&#039;created&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		&#039;modified&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		&#039;edate&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;tags&#039; =&gt; [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		&#039;category&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
		&#039;[new]&#039; =&gt; false,
		&#039;[accessible]&#039; =&gt; [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		&#039;[dirty]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[original]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[virtual]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[hasErrors]&#039; =&gt; false,
		&#039;[errors]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[invalid]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[repository]&#039; =&gt; &#039;Articles&#039;
	
	},
	&#039;articleid&#039; =&gt; (int) 4009,
	&#039;metaTitle&#039; =&gt; &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon&#039;,
	&#039;metaKeywords&#039; =&gt; &#039;NREGS&#039;,
	&#039;metaDesc&#039; =&gt; &#039;


Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s largest workforce of close...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;font &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;&lt;font &gt;Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The implementation of NAC&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;English&#039;,
	&#039;SITE_URL&#039; =&gt; &#039;https://im4change.in/&#039;,
	&#039;site_title&#039; =&gt; &#039;im4change&#039;,
	&#039;adminprix&#039; =&gt; &#039;admin&#039;
]
$article_current = object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

	&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 4009,
	&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon&#039;,
	&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/font&gt;
&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The implementation of NAC&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;Sify News, 31 October, 2010, http://sify.com/finance/sreelatha-menon-nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-news-analysis-kk5akmjiafg.html&#039;,
	&#039;article_img&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;article_img_thumb&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;status&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
	&#039;show_on_home&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
	&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;EN&#039;,
	&#039;category_id&#039; =&gt; (int) 16,
	&#039;tag_keyword&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;seo_url&#039; =&gt; &#039;nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-by-sreelatha-menon-4099&#039;,
	&#039;meta_title&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;meta_keywords&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;meta_description&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;noindex&#039; =&gt; (int) 0,
	&#039;publish_date&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
	&#039;most_visit_section_id&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;article_big_img&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;liveid&#039; =&gt; (int) 4099,
	&#039;created&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	&#039;modified&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	&#039;edate&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;tags&#039; =&gt; [
		(int) 0 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {}
	],
	&#039;category&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
	&#039;[new]&#039; =&gt; false,
	&#039;[accessible]&#039; =&gt; [
		&#039;*&#039; =&gt; true,
		&#039;id&#039; =&gt; false
	],
	&#039;[dirty]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[original]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[virtual]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[hasErrors]&#039; =&gt; false,
	&#039;[errors]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[invalid]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[repository]&#039; =&gt; &#039;Articles&#039;

}
$articleid = (int) 4009
$metaTitle = &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon&#039;
$metaKeywords = &#039;NREGS&#039;
$metaDesc = &#039;


Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s largest workforce of close...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;font &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;&lt;font &gt;Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The implementation of NAC&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
$lang = &#039;English&#039;
$SITE_URL = &#039;https://im4change.in/&#039;
$site_title = &#039;im4change&#039;
$adminprix = &#039;admin&#039;</pre><pre class="stack-trace">include - APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8
Cake\View\View::_evaluate() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1413
Cake\View\View::_render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1374
Cake\View\View::renderLayout() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 927
Cake\View\View::render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 885
Cake\Controller\Controller::render() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 791
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 126
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51</pre></div></pre>latest-news-updates/nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-by-sreelatha-menon-4099.html"/>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
    <link href="https://im4change.in/css/control.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
          media="all"/>
    <title>LATEST NEWS UPDATES | NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon | Im4change.org</title>
    <meta name="description" content="


Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&acirc;&euro;&trade;s largest workforce of close..."/>
    <script src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-1.10.2.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-migrate.min.js"></script>
    <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">

        $(document).ready(function () {
            var img = $("img")[0]; // Get my img elem
            var pic_real_width, pic_real_height;
            $("<img/>") // Make in memory copy of image to avoid css issues
                .attr("src", $(img).attr("src"))
                .load(function () {
                    pic_real_width = this.width;   // Note: $(this).width() will not
                    pic_real_height = this.height; // work for in memory images.
                });
        });
    </script>
    <style type="text/css">
        @media screen {
            div.divFooter {
                display: block;
            }
        }

        @media print {
            .printbutton {
                display: none !important;
            }
        }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="98%" align="center">
    <tr>
        <td class="top_bg">
            <div class="divFooter">
                <img src="https://im4change.in/images/logo1.jpg" height="59" border="0"
                     alt="Resource centre on India's rural distress" style="padding-top:14px;"/>
            </div>

        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td id="topspace">&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>

    <tr id="topspace">
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td height="50" style="border-bottom:1px solid #000; padding-top:10px;" class="printbutton">
            <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page "
                         onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form>
        </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td width="100%">
            <h1 class="news_headlines" style="font-style:normal">
                <strong>NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon</strong></h1>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td width="100%" style="font-family:Arial, 'Segoe Script', 'Segoe UI', sans-serif, serif"><font size="3">
                <font ><br /></font><div align="justify"><font >Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&acirc;&euro;&trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.</font><br /><br /><font >In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.</font><br /><br /><font >The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.</font><br /><br /><font >The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.</font><br /><br /><font >Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?</font><br /><br /><font >The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.</font><br /><br /><font >The implementation of NAC&acirc;&euro;&trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&acirc;&euro;&trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.</font><br /><br /><font >At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.</font><br /><br /><font >According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.</font><br /><br /><font >The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.</font><br /><br /><font >The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.</font><br /><br /><font >The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.</font><br /><br /><font >Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.</font><br /><br /><font >NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.</font><br /><br /><font >It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.</font><br /><br /><font >Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.</font><br /><br /></div>               </font>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td height="50" style="border-top:1px solid #000; border-bottom:1px solid #000;padding-top:10px;">
            <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page "
                         onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table></body>
</html>'

}
$reasonPhrase = 'OK'
header - [internal], line ??
Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emitStatusLine() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148
Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emit() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 54
Cake\Http\Server::emit() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 141
[main] - ROOT/webroot/index.php, line 39

Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
Code Context
                    $value

                ), $first);

                $first = false;
$response = object(Cake\Http\Response) {

	'status' => (int) 200,
	'contentType' => 'text/html',
	'headers' => [
		'Content-Type' => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
	],
	'file' => null,
	'fileRange' => [],
	'cookies' => object(Cake\Http\Cookie\CookieCollection) {},
	'cacheDirectives' => [],
	'body' => '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <link rel="canonical" href="https://im4change.in/<pre class="cake-error"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-trace').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-trace').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none');"><b>Notice</b> (8)</a>: Undefined variable: urlPrefix [<b>APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp</b>, line <b>8</b>]<div id="cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-trace" class="cake-stack-trace" style="display: none;"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-code').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-code').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Code</a> <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-context').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-context').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Context</a><pre id="cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-code" class="cake-code-dump" style="display: none;"><code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"></span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">head</span><span style="color: #007700">&gt;
</span></span></code>
<span class="code-highlight"><code><span style="color: #000000">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;link&nbsp;rel="canonical"&nbsp;href="<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">Configure</span><span style="color: #007700">::</span><span style="color: #0000BB">read</span><span style="color: #007700">(</span><span style="color: #DD0000">'SITE_URL'</span><span style="color: #007700">);&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$urlPrefix</span><span style="color: #007700">;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">category</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">slug</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>/<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">seo_url</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>.html"/&gt;
</span></code></span>
<code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">meta&nbsp;http</span><span style="color: #007700">-</span><span style="color: #0000BB">equiv</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"Content-Type"&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">content</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"text/html;&nbsp;charset=utf-8"</span><span style="color: #007700">/&gt;
</span></span></code></pre><pre id="cakeErr68063c0edc4c1-context" class="cake-context" style="display: none;">$viewFile = &#039;/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp&#039;
$dataForView = [
	&#039;article_current&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

		&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 4009,
		&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon&#039;,
		&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/font&gt;
&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The implementation of NAC&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
		&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;Sify News, 31 October, 2010, http://sify.com/finance/sreelatha-menon-nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-news-analysis-kk5akmjiafg.html&#039;,
		&#039;article_img&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;article_img_thumb&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;status&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
		&#039;show_on_home&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
		&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;EN&#039;,
		&#039;category_id&#039; =&gt; (int) 16,
		&#039;tag_keyword&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;seo_url&#039; =&gt; &#039;nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-by-sreelatha-menon-4099&#039;,
		&#039;meta_title&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;meta_keywords&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;meta_description&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;noindex&#039; =&gt; (int) 0,
		&#039;publish_date&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
		&#039;most_visit_section_id&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;article_big_img&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;liveid&#039; =&gt; (int) 4099,
		&#039;created&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		&#039;modified&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		&#039;edate&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;tags&#039; =&gt; [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		&#039;category&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
		&#039;[new]&#039; =&gt; false,
		&#039;[accessible]&#039; =&gt; [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		&#039;[dirty]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[original]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[virtual]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[hasErrors]&#039; =&gt; false,
		&#039;[errors]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[invalid]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[repository]&#039; =&gt; &#039;Articles&#039;
	
	},
	&#039;articleid&#039; =&gt; (int) 4009,
	&#039;metaTitle&#039; =&gt; &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon&#039;,
	&#039;metaKeywords&#039; =&gt; &#039;NREGS&#039;,
	&#039;metaDesc&#039; =&gt; &#039;


Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s largest workforce of close...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;font &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;&lt;font &gt;Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The implementation of NAC&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;English&#039;,
	&#039;SITE_URL&#039; =&gt; &#039;https://im4change.in/&#039;,
	&#039;site_title&#039; =&gt; &#039;im4change&#039;,
	&#039;adminprix&#039; =&gt; &#039;admin&#039;
]
$article_current = object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

	&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 4009,
	&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon&#039;,
	&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/font&gt;
&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The implementation of NAC&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;font face=&quot;arial,helvetica,sans-serif&quot; size=&quot;3&quot;&gt;Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;Sify News, 31 October, 2010, http://sify.com/finance/sreelatha-menon-nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-news-analysis-kk5akmjiafg.html&#039;,
	&#039;article_img&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;article_img_thumb&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;status&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
	&#039;show_on_home&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
	&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;EN&#039;,
	&#039;category_id&#039; =&gt; (int) 16,
	&#039;tag_keyword&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;seo_url&#039; =&gt; &#039;nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-by-sreelatha-menon-4099&#039;,
	&#039;meta_title&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;meta_keywords&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;meta_description&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;noindex&#039; =&gt; (int) 0,
	&#039;publish_date&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
	&#039;most_visit_section_id&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;article_big_img&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;liveid&#039; =&gt; (int) 4099,
	&#039;created&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	&#039;modified&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	&#039;edate&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;tags&#039; =&gt; [
		(int) 0 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {}
	],
	&#039;category&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
	&#039;[new]&#039; =&gt; false,
	&#039;[accessible]&#039; =&gt; [
		&#039;*&#039; =&gt; true,
		&#039;id&#039; =&gt; false
	],
	&#039;[dirty]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[original]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[virtual]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[hasErrors]&#039; =&gt; false,
	&#039;[errors]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[invalid]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[repository]&#039; =&gt; &#039;Articles&#039;

}
$articleid = (int) 4009
$metaTitle = &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon&#039;
$metaKeywords = &#039;NREGS&#039;
$metaDesc = &#039;


Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s largest workforce of close...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;font &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;&lt;font &gt;Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The implementation of NAC&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&amp;acirc;&amp;euro;&amp;trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font &gt;Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
$lang = &#039;English&#039;
$SITE_URL = &#039;https://im4change.in/&#039;
$site_title = &#039;im4change&#039;
$adminprix = &#039;admin&#039;</pre><pre class="stack-trace">include - APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8
Cake\View\View::_evaluate() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1413
Cake\View\View::_render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1374
Cake\View\View::renderLayout() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 927
Cake\View\View::render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 885
Cake\Controller\Controller::render() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 791
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 126
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51</pre></div></pre>latest-news-updates/nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-by-sreelatha-menon-4099.html"/>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
    <link href="https://im4change.in/css/control.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
          media="all"/>
    <title>LATEST NEWS UPDATES | NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon | Im4change.org</title>
    <meta name="description" content="


Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&acirc;&euro;&trade;s largest workforce of close..."/>
    <script src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-1.10.2.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-migrate.min.js"></script>
    <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">

        $(document).ready(function () {
            var img = $("img")[0]; // Get my img elem
            var pic_real_width, pic_real_height;
            $("<img/>") // Make in memory copy of image to avoid css issues
                .attr("src", $(img).attr("src"))
                .load(function () {
                    pic_real_width = this.width;   // Note: $(this).width() will not
                    pic_real_height = this.height; // work for in memory images.
                });
        });
    </script>
    <style type="text/css">
        @media screen {
            div.divFooter {
                display: block;
            }
        }

        @media print {
            .printbutton {
                display: none !important;
            }
        }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="98%" align="center">
    <tr>
        <td class="top_bg">
            <div class="divFooter">
                <img src="https://im4change.in/images/logo1.jpg" height="59" border="0"
                     alt="Resource centre on India's rural distress" style="padding-top:14px;"/>
            </div>

        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td id="topspace">&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>

    <tr id="topspace">
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td height="50" style="border-bottom:1px solid #000; padding-top:10px;" class="printbutton">
            <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page "
                         onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form>
        </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td width="100%">
            <h1 class="news_headlines" style="font-style:normal">
                <strong>NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon</strong></h1>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td width="100%" style="font-family:Arial, 'Segoe Script', 'Segoe UI', sans-serif, serif"><font size="3">
                <font ><br /></font><div align="justify"><font >Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&acirc;&euro;&trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.</font><br /><br /><font >In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.</font><br /><br /><font >The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.</font><br /><br /><font >The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.</font><br /><br /><font >Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?</font><br /><br /><font >The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.</font><br /><br /><font >The implementation of NAC&acirc;&euro;&trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&acirc;&euro;&trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.</font><br /><br /><font >At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.</font><br /><br /><font >According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.</font><br /><br /><font >The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.</font><br /><br /><font >The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.</font><br /><br /><font >The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.</font><br /><br /><font >Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.</font><br /><br /><font >NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.</font><br /><br /><font >It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.</font><br /><br /><font >Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.</font><br /><br /></div>               </font>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td height="50" style="border-top:1px solid #000; border-bottom:1px solid #000;padding-top:10px;">
            <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page "
                         onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table></body>
</html>'

}
$cookies = []
$values = [
	(int) 0 => 'text/html; charset=UTF-8'
]
$name = 'Content-Type'
$first = true
$value = 'text/html; charset=UTF-8'
header - [internal], line ??
Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emitHeaders() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181
Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emit() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 55
Cake\Http\Server::emit() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 141
[main] - ROOT/webroot/index.php, line 39

<head>

    <link rel="canonical" href="<?php echo Configure::read('SITE_URL'); ?><?php echo $urlPrefix;?><?php echo $article_current->category->slug; ?>/<?php echo $article_current->seo_url; ?>.html"/>

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>

$viewFile = '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp'
$dataForView = [
	'article_current' => object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

		'id' => (int) 4009,
		'title' => 'NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon',
		'subheading' => '',
		'description' => '<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3"><br />
</font>
<div align="justify">
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&acirc;&euro;&trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The implementation of NAC&acirc;&euro;&trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&acirc;&euro;&trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.</font><br />
<br />
</div>',
		'credit_writer' => 'Sify News, 31 October, 2010, http://sify.com/finance/sreelatha-menon-nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-news-analysis-kk5akmjiafg.html',
		'article_img' => '',
		'article_img_thumb' => '',
		'status' => (int) 1,
		'show_on_home' => (int) 1,
		'lang' => 'EN',
		'category_id' => (int) 16,
		'tag_keyword' => '',
		'seo_url' => 'nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-by-sreelatha-menon-4099',
		'meta_title' => null,
		'meta_keywords' => null,
		'meta_description' => null,
		'noindex' => (int) 0,
		'publish_date' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
		'most_visit_section_id' => null,
		'article_big_img' => null,
		'liveid' => (int) 4099,
		'created' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		'modified' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		'edate' => '',
		'tags' => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		'category' => object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
		'[new]' => false,
		'[accessible]' => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		'[dirty]' => [[maximum depth reached]],
		'[original]' => [[maximum depth reached]],
		'[virtual]' => [[maximum depth reached]],
		'[hasErrors]' => false,
		'[errors]' => [[maximum depth reached]],
		'[invalid]' => [[maximum depth reached]],
		'[repository]' => 'Articles'
	
	},
	'articleid' => (int) 4009,
	'metaTitle' => 'LATEST NEWS UPDATES | NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon',
	'metaKeywords' => 'NREGS',
	'metaDesc' => '


Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&acirc;&euro;&trade;s largest workforce of close...',
	'disp' => '<font ><br /></font><div align="justify"><font >Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&acirc;&euro;&trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.</font><br /><br /><font >In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.</font><br /><br /><font >The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.</font><br /><br /><font >The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.</font><br /><br /><font >Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?</font><br /><br /><font >The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.</font><br /><br /><font >The implementation of NAC&acirc;&euro;&trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&acirc;&euro;&trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.</font><br /><br /><font >At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.</font><br /><br /><font >According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.</font><br /><br /><font >The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.</font><br /><br /><font >The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.</font><br /><br /><font >The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.</font><br /><br /><font >Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.</font><br /><br /><font >NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.</font><br /><br /><font >It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.</font><br /><br /><font >Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.</font><br /><br /></div>',
	'lang' => 'English',
	'SITE_URL' => 'https://im4change.in/',
	'site_title' => 'im4change',
	'adminprix' => 'admin'
]
$article_current = object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

	'id' => (int) 4009,
	'title' => 'NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon',
	'subheading' => '',
	'description' => '<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3"><br />
</font>
<div align="justify">
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&acirc;&euro;&trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The implementation of NAC&acirc;&euro;&trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&acirc;&euro;&trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.</font><br />
<br />
<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.</font><br />
<br />
</div>',
	'credit_writer' => 'Sify News, 31 October, 2010, http://sify.com/finance/sreelatha-menon-nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-news-analysis-kk5akmjiafg.html',
	'article_img' => '',
	'article_img_thumb' => '',
	'status' => (int) 1,
	'show_on_home' => (int) 1,
	'lang' => 'EN',
	'category_id' => (int) 16,
	'tag_keyword' => '',
	'seo_url' => 'nrega-vs-minimum-wages-act-by-sreelatha-menon-4099',
	'meta_title' => null,
	'meta_keywords' => null,
	'meta_description' => null,
	'noindex' => (int) 0,
	'publish_date' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
	'most_visit_section_id' => null,
	'article_big_img' => null,
	'liveid' => (int) 4099,
	'created' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	'modified' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	'edate' => '',
	'tags' => [
		(int) 0 => object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {}
	],
	'category' => object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
	'[new]' => false,
	'[accessible]' => [
		'*' => true,
		'id' => false
	],
	'[dirty]' => [],
	'[original]' => [],
	'[virtual]' => [],
	'[hasErrors]' => false,
	'[errors]' => [],
	'[invalid]' => [],
	'[repository]' => 'Articles'

}
$articleid = (int) 4009
$metaTitle = 'LATEST NEWS UPDATES | NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon'
$metaKeywords = 'NREGS'
$metaDesc = '


Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&acirc;&euro;&trade;s largest workforce of close...'
$disp = '<font ><br /></font><div align="justify"><font >Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world&acirc;&euro;&trade;s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders.</font><br /><br /><font >In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way.</font><br /><br /><font >The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC.</font><br /><br /><font >The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze.</font><br /><br /><font >Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far?</font><br /><br /><font >The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more.</font><br /><br /><font >The implementation of NAC&acirc;&euro;&trade;s recommendation could mean that either the states&acirc;&euro;&trade; laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage.</font><br /><br /><font >At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120.</font><br /><br /><font >According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme.</font><br /><br /><font >The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL.</font><br /><br /><font >The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report.</font><br /><br /><font >The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act.</font><br /><br /><font >Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states.</font><br /><br /><font >NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS.</font><br /><br /><font >It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are.</font><br /><br /><font >Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.</font><br /><br /></div>'
$lang = 'English'
$SITE_URL = 'https://im4change.in/'
$site_title = 'im4change'
$adminprix = 'admin'

include - APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8
Cake\View\View::_evaluate() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1413
Cake\View\View::_render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1374
Cake\View\View::renderLayout() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 927
Cake\View\View::render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 885
Cake\Controller\Controller::render() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 791
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 126
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51

NREGA vs Minimum Wages Act by Sreelatha Menon

Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world’s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders. In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the other way. The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling party, last week recommended that minimum wages be paid to NREGS workers. This brings the government in direct conflict with NAC. The rural development ministry froze the minimum wage for NREGS at Rs 100 two years ago and has not bothered to revise it annually by indexing it to the consumer price index for agricultural workers (CPI-AL), as prescribed by its own committee on wages, headed by Jean Dreze. Will NAC recommendation wake up the government to the violation it has overlooked so far? The employment guarantee Act is in conflict with the Minimum Wages Act as NREGS wages are fixed by the Centre and minimum wages in most states are much higher than that. As the Centre has fixed Rs 100 as the NREGS wage, the states, with the exception of Goa, are not feeling obliged to pay more. The implementation of NAC’s recommendation could mean that either the states’ laws apply or the Centre revises the minimum NREGS wage. At present, there is no parity between the two rates. If the NREGS wage is Rs 100 in Rajasthan, the minimum wage in the state is Rs 135. In Kerala, the minimum wage is Rs 175, while NREGS pays Rs 120. According to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh, any payment below the minimum wage is forced labour. So, the government is violating its own law for its largest employment-generation scheme. The rural development ministry now has the option of issuing a notification saying the states can enforce their minimum wages for NREGS or defreeze the Rs 100 wage it had prescribed and link it to CPI-AL. The ministry had asked a committee headed by Pronab Sen under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to fix a NREGS minimum wage indexed to CPI-AL. Five months have passed and the panel is yet to give a report. The Dreze committee on wages had sought an amendment to the employment guarantee Act as there was a possibility of it clashing with the Minimum Wages Act. Section 6 (1) of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act says the Centre can specify wage rates for this Act. The states can make variations but not go below the minimum rate specified by the Centre. This could mean violation of the Minimum Wages Act in many states, as is happening now. However, Section 6 (2) says agricultural wages should be paid till a separate rate is fixed. As long as state wages are paid, there is no conflict. But after the Centre fixed the rate, first at Rs 80 and then at Rs 100, the gap with minimum wages has been growing in the states. NAC, as in the matter of food security, stops with a broad recommendation and does not suggest the ways it can be put into practice. While recommending food subsidies, it does not say how leakages can be plugged and food production can be increased. So with NREGS. It does not say if the employment guarantee Act should be amended to ensure that minimum wages are paid or whether the Centre should defreeze its wage and index it to CPI-AL or just let the Centre mandate whatever the state rates are. Anyway, the more important question is whether the government of India wants to follow its own laws.