I wrote it wrong, it is /Day..... Even that is huge increase. I will edit it out. It is increasing. Here in Kerala we are having labours coming in truck loads from Orrisa and Northern India along with T.N, since the construction boom.
Kerala Local's charge : Rs.350/Day
Tamilians charge: Rs 250-275/Day
Northern's, oriya's: Rs. 200-250/Day
Wages of disparity
C. J. Punnathara
Kishen Ram, working with his team of carpenters working at a building site in Kochi, says: "There is an acute paucity of employment in my native village in Bikaner and job opportunities and wages at the construction sites across urban Rajasthan are highly erratic and incredibly low." The Kochi building site also has stonemasons and painters from Maharashtra and unskilled workers from Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
It is a mini-India out there and they have all descended on Kerala leaving their home and hearth behind, seeking their El Dorado. They also constitute a part of Urban India of the 21st century, where minimum wages are often unheard of and is facetious and paltry even when the 1948 Act is enforced. While the urban middle-class India awaits the Union Budget from the Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, in high anticipation, what does it hold for the millions of unorganised workers of this vast land?
Employment statistics
The Labour Bureau of the Union Government provides statistics on various categories of employment by Union and State governments and detailed the minimum wage for each category. States such as Tamil Nadu specify 90 occupations where minimum wages have been declared.
Surprisingly, even after 50 years of planned economic development, the minimum wages declared for the lowest category of work is Rs 22.50 a day by Karnataka, followed by Rs 26 in Tripura. From this meagre wages, an average family living in rural/urban India is supposed to eke out a living, paying for food, clothing, shelter, health and children's education. The national average for the lowest category of work, published in December 2002, is a dismal Rs 50.
In Arunachal Pradesh, 28 categories of employment have been identified and the maximum wage prescribed is just Rs 39.87, while the national average is not much better at Rs 84. Kerala offers the highest wage for select categories of work at Rs 319.60. Small wonder that Kishen and workers like him have been seeking their fortunes in the State, where militant trade unionism and vigilant governments have ensured that there is equal pay for equal work. And wages that are far above the minimum prescribed by various State governments. And even that, as Kishen says, which are seldom ever enforced.
Minimum wages
This is a far cry from what the tripartite committee report that formed the basis of the Minimum Wages Act of 1948 had in mind. Carrying forward these suggestions, the Indian Labour Conference of 1957 at Nainital recommended that minimum wages be fixed so as to support a family of three: Wages to provide 2,700 calories per average Indian adult, 72 yards of cloth per annum per family, rent conforming to the minimum area provided for under general industrial housing scheme; while fuel, lighting and other miscellaneous expenditure were supposed to constitute 20 per cent of the wages. Demands for children's education, medical requirements, minimum recreation and provision for old age were also touched upon.
What the Minimum Wages Act and successive Labour Conferences were not able to deliver over the past five decades, seems to have been rendered possible by the heightened mobility of labour across India.
Some economists argue that minimum wages should be left to market forces. Based on sound economic logic they argue that minimum wages should be region-specific, tailor-made to the pace of economic growth, social conditions, employment-potential and level of poverty prevailing in that geographic location. This in effect, they argue, would give lower-remuneration employment to the maximum number of people, rather than minimum wages employment to the minimum number of people.
Wage fixing
Even the Union Government was seen to be veering to this policy when it was promulgating the Employment Guarantee Act, which said "notwithstanding anything contained in the Minimum Wages Act 1948, the wage payable to those working under the EGA will be fixed at Rs 60." There was no explanation for why the wage is to be fixed at this rate.
But how far can such principles be applicable to deeply hierarchical societies such as India where equal pay for equal work has never been the norm. For centuries, the caste system had determined the job that a person is entitled to perform and the same caste and occupation were the primary determinants of remuneration. This formidable legacy does not make the Finance Minister's task any easier.
Global competition
There is another economic rationale that is compelling the economy to retain low minimum wages. Liberalisation and globalisation have thrown open the Indian economy to global competition. To survive, companies have to reduce the cost of production, increase productivity and generate higher returns for the consumer and the shareholder. The logic: foreign investments would flow into regions with the lowest cost of production. China is the classic example.
However, a study published in Development Bank Research Bulletin cites the burgeoning Special Economic Zones of Shenzhen and Guangzhon where the average wages are Yuan 4.66 per hour (Rs 26.7) and the "sweat-shops" outside the SEZ where the average wages are Yuan 4.02 per hour (Rs 23.1).
In contrast, the study points out that the average minimum wages in India are Rs 7.5-12.5 per hour. India has a long way to go to catch up with even the so-called "sweat-shops" of China. And these figures are for the organised working class population of modern India. Less said about the millions of workers in unorganised rural India, where the situation is invariably worse.
www.blonnet.com
