{"id":29874,"date":"2018-10-26T12:51:27","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T07:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=29874"},"modified":"2018-10-26T12:51:27","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T07:21:27","slug":"nrega-v-minimum-farm-wages-how-jobs-act-is-losing-out-to-funds-crunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/nrega-v-minimum-farm-wages-how-jobs-act-is-losing-out-to-funds-crunch\/","title":{"rendered":"NREGA v minimum farm wages: How jobs Act is losing out to funds\u00a0crunch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/explained\/nrega-v-minimum-farm-wages-how-jobs-act-is-losing-out-to-funds-crunch-5144445\/\">NREGA v minimum farm wages: How jobs Act is losing out to funds\u00a0crunch<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Context<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Low NREGA wages<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>What has happened?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The NREGA was enacted in 2005 \u201cfor the enhancement of livelihood security of the households in rural areas of the country by providing at least one hundred days of guaranteed wage employment in every financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lowest ever NREGA wages<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The decision to not implement the Mahendra Dev Committee\u2019s recommendations led to the lowest ever NREGA wage increase until 2017, with five states receiving an increase of only a rupee<\/li>\n<li>A year later, the wages hit a new low after the Nagesh Singh Committee\u2019s report was turned down<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The two Committees<\/strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Mahendra Dev Committee<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In 2014, the seven-member Mahendra Dev Committee instituted by the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) recommended that workers should be paid either the minimum wage fixed by the state or NREGA wage, whichever was higher<\/li>\n<li>It also recommended that the annual revision of NREGA wages should be based on Consumer Price Index-Rural (CPI-R), which reflects the current consumption pattern of rural households, and not on the CPI for Agricultural Labourers (CPI-AL), which is based on a 35-year-old consumption basket<strong style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Nagesh Singh Committee<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In 2016, the government instituted another committee to study the issue<\/li>\n<li>This 12-member panel, headed by MoRD Additional Secretary Nagesh Singh, came out with a toned-down version of the Mahendra Dev report in July 2017<\/li>\n<li>The panel recommended that \u201cthere is no compelling reason\u201d to align NREGA wages with minimum wages of states<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Argument against this<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A sole member wrote a dissent note in which he reminded the panel of the Supreme Court\u2019s order that \u201cMGNREGA work is the last recourse while seeking work\u201d, and that lower payment would push the worker and his family into \u201csub-human existence\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Finance Ministry\u2019s view<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Finance Ministry, however, argued that moving to CPI-R was \u201cnot advisable at this stage\u201d.<\/li>\n<li>Since the implementation of the National Food Security Act (2013), prices of food items have reduced<\/li>\n<li>CPI-AL gives 70% weightage to food and tobacco, while CPI-R gives only 59% weightage to food items, with the remaining weightage given to expenses incurred on education, transport, health<\/li>\n<li>The Finance Ministry\u2019s said that these \u201cmiscellaneous items\u201d such as \u201chealth, transport and communication, recreation, education\u201d under CPI-R \u201cmay not represent the demand of NREGA workers\u201d and, moreover, such a move would lead to a bigger fiscal burden.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NREGA v minimum farm wages: How jobs Act is losing out to funds\u00a0crunch Context Low NREGA wages\u00a0 What has happened? The NREGA was enacted in 2005 \u201cfor the enhancement of livelihood security of the households in rural areas of the country by providing at least one hundred days of guaranteed wage employment in every financial&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/nrega-v-minimum-farm-wages-how-jobs-act-is-losing-out-to-funds-crunch\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">NREGA v minimum farm wages: How jobs Act is losing out to funds\u00a0crunch<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704688710},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}