The revised daily wage for NREGS workers is still lower than the minimum wages paid in several States. A CONTROVERSY seems to have surfaced between the Prime Minister's Office and the National Advisory Council (NAC) on the issue of wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The NAC has been arguing for some time that there should be parity between wages under the National Rural Employment...

The Central government has revised wages of agricultural labourers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. The new wages are based on the consumer price index (CPI), as suggested by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and are retrospectively effective from January 1, 2011. Linking wages to CPI has enhanced them from 17% to 30%. The revised salaries will benefit over 50 million people across India. The base wage, which was...

With the government revising wages under MGNREGA, it could be another pressure point for rising inflation, if appropriate policy action to address the demand-supply gap is not in place, said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday. "MGNREGA has the potential to raise the wage bargaining power even in the unorganised sector, particularly in the agriculture and construction sectors, besides raising rural demand at a faster pace relative to the...

The finance ministry has offered only a 12% increase in the budgetary support to the central plan for the coming fiscal against the Planning Commission's demand for an 18% hike. The plan panel sought higher support, citing increased requirement for the flagship schemes, particularly MGNREGA, or Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act . The North Block, constrained by its compulsion to return to fiscal consolidation and additional expenditure due...

‘The least that every worker in field and factory is entitled to is a minimum wage which will enable him to live in modest comfort, and humane hours of labour which do not break his strength or spirit...,’ Jawaharlal Nehru declared stirringly in his presidential address to Congress in Lahore in 1929. Eight decades later, the Union government of free India resolved that it would not pay the minimum wage...