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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | The Curious Case of MGNREGA wages -Harsha Pareek

The Curious Case of MGNREGA wages -Harsha Pareek

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published Published on Apr 8, 2018   modified Modified on Apr 8, 2018
-Hindkisan.com

Alarmingly, despite wages paid under MGNREGA being much lower than the standard minimum wage in most states, increasing number of people from rural households are applying for jobs under the employment scheme. This trend is an indicator of the mounting distress in the rural economy which is aggravated by paucity of jobs.

Mocking the economic condition of the distressed rural working community, the Union Government has decided to uphold the low wage rates for ten states paid under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) for 2018-19. In the same breath, the Centre has maintained that 28 of the 36 states and Union territories will continue getting wages much lower than the prescribed minimum wages of the respective states.

As per the revised wage rates issued by the Union government the wages will remain unchanged in states like Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttarakhand, UP, and Rajasthan where the wages are already the lowest compared to some other states of the country. The difference between the wages under the employment scheme and minimum wage is greatest in Tripura, where the MGNREGA wage rate is only 58 per cent of the state minimum wage for agriculture. This ratio is 59 per cent for Sikkim, 64 per cent for Gujarat and 65 per cent for Andhra Pradesh.

While states like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra will get a meager wage hike of Rs 2 per day, the state of Tamil Nadu has got the highest hike of Rs 19 per day.
 
Does expenditure hike address the distress? No.

The dismal wage rate hike has come in the wake of record government expenditure on MGNREGS for 2018-2019 which has seen a jump of more than 37 percent from last year. The Government has announced expenditure of Rs 65,887 crore on the employment scheme for this financial year which is a hike of Rs 25,000 crore than what was spent in 2013-14.

While the government pats its back for increasing the amount spent on the scheme, it refuses to answer justify the almost nil hike in the wages. 11, 43, 04, 000 active workers currently engaged under the scheme would be facing the brunt of the laughable hike.

“A large chunk of the funds spent in 2017-18 went to settle pending dues instead of improving wage rate” said Himanshu, associate professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University while explaining the contradiction in numbers.

While talking to Hind Kisan, Himanshu underlined, “There is no provision which allows the government to pay wages which is lower than the minimum wages and there is no way it can justify its actions. The government is attempting to dilute the Act itself.”

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Hindkisan.com, 6 April, 2018, http://www.hindkisan.com/articles/the-curious_case_of_mgnrega_wages/


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