Minimum Wage Policy

What is the issue?

What constitutes the unorganised sector?

About 500 million Indians languish in the “unorganised sector”.
A disconcertingly large portion of them remain vulnerable to the vagaries of unemployment, exploitation, insecurity and poverty.
Social degradation, cultural exclusion and developmental neglect are also other aspects that accompany this.
Notably, this sector contributes 45% of the wealth of our country — though is often perceived a national liability.

What is the Pay-Wage dichotomy?

Pay refers to the remunerations that are derived by those employed in the organised while wage refers to the unorganised.
While pay revisions are widely discussed, wages of the unorganised sector doesn’t get the same level of scrutiny.
Salaries have undergone big increases in India and corporate emoluments have are increasing rapidly too.
But wages (in real terms) remains where it was before the beginning of the ‘New Economic Policy’ of 1991.
Wages of the unskilled workers vary wildly from Rs 850 per day in Kerala to a third of it in most other parts of the country.

What can be a minimum accepted standard?

The connection between poverty and the systemic injustice done to those bracketed in the “un-organised” sector needs recognition.
We therefore need to evolve a rational minimum wage policy.
The peons/attendants are the lowest paid in the organised sector, who currently have a minimum take away of Rs 25,000 a month.
While there are a lot of other benefits in the organised sector, that those in the unorganised lack.
We should therefore atleast ensure that the minimum wages in the unorganised sector are comparably close to the organised.

Source: Business Standard