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The broken promise of decent and fair wages -Chandan Kumar & Raghunath Kuchik

-The Hindu

The draft rules to the Wages Act, a law expected to provide economic and social justice, will only exploit workers further

Amidst the upheaval of debates concerning hate-violence, Article 370 of the Constitution, the temple at Ayodhya, and others, the Central government has finally woken up to examine the backbone of the Indian economy (working people), by proposing the rules to the labour Code on Wages Act 2019. Earlier in the year during the monsoon session of Parliament, the government celebrated the passage of this law, vociferously stating that the 70 years of waiting in granting the constitutional right of a guaranteed minimum wage hadcome to an end.

‘Starvation wages’ continue

Accordingly, it was expected that the draft rules to the Act would be a ‘game-changer’ to the status quo as far as the lives of workers in the informal sector are concerned. It was believed that informal workers — they account for 93% of the total working population and contribute to over 60% of India’s GDP — had finally been acknowledged for their contributions to the nation-building process. But it was alleged that this would revive the crisis of the current economic slowdown, as the law proposes to increase income capacity and the purchasing power of the informal workers.

The proposed framework to determine wage will continue pushing ‘starvation wages’ in India. In view of this, the draft rules proposed were received with much hope by solidarity groups and worker collectives in India. It was expected that the rules would have considered the Supreme Court of India’s landmark jurisprudence in the ‘Raptakos’ case (1991) which advocated the concept and the right of a living wage.

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