New Delhi: The Union rural development ministry has announced revised wages under the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) for the financial year 2024-25. They will come into effect on Monday (April 1).
Wages in all states and Union territories (UTs) covered by the Act have been hiked, although the amounts vary from state to state.
The Act guarantees 100 days of employment to rural households at specially notified daily wages.
Haryana continues to have the country’s highest MGNREGA wage. The revised wage in the state is Rs 374 per day, a 4.8% increase from last year’s Rs 357 per day.
The Gnathang, Lachung and Lachen gram panchayats in Sikkim, followed by Goa and Karnataka, have the next highest wages as per the latest revision at Rs 374, Rs 356 and Rs 349 per day respectively.
The rest of Sikkim has a separate wage under the Act and its revised value for FY 2024-25 is Rs 249 per day.
Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh’s non-scheduled areas will have the lowest MGNREGA wages starting Monday at Rs 234, Rs 234 and Rs 236 per day respectively.
In terms of the highest increase in wages compared to last year, Goa saw the highest hike of Rs 34 per day – work under the Act will now pay Rs 356 per day compared to last year’s Rs 322 per day. This is a 10.56% year-on-year hike.
Karnataka (hike of Rs 33 per day), Andhra Pradesh and Telangana (hikes of Rs 28 per day) come next.
These three states saw percentage increases in their wages of 10.44%, 10.29% and 10.29% respectively compared to last year.
Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand (hikes of Rs 7 per day) and Nagaland (hike of Rs 10 per day) saw the lowest hikes compared to last year.
In percentage terms, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand also experienced the lowest increase in wages compared to last year at 3.04% each. The two states are followed by Lakshadweep in this regard, which saw a 3.62% hike.
The average wage of all states and UTs for FY 2024-25 is around Rs 284 per day. Last year this was around Rs 267.
Wages for the Act are revised every year based on changes in the agricultural labour dimension of the consumer price index (CPI-AL).
But in February this year, the parliamentary standing committee on rural development and panchayati raj said that the practice of revising wages keeping CPI-AL values from 2010-11 as the base “is not coherent with the present inflation and cost of living”.
Citing the finds of an expert committee which recommended in 2019 that the need-based minimum wage in India be fixed at Rs 375 a day, the standing committee recommended that MGNREGA wages be ‘revised accordingly’.
No administrative unit will pay more than Rs 374 per day as per the revised wages, though.
Also read: No CAG Performance Audit of MGNREGA for 10 Years Poses Serious Questions
According to an analysis by The Hindu Businessline on the revised wages released yesterday, the amounts are “way lower than how much agriculture labourers earn”.
It noted that the MGNREGA daily wages as of FY 2023-24 were lower than the daily wage for agricultural labourers as of FY 2022-23 in all major states except Gujarat.
MGNREGA wages were on average Rs 105 lower than the daily wages for agricultural labour as of FY23, it added.
The gap between the two wage values was the highest in Kerala, where the MGNREGA daily wage for FY 2023-24 was Rs 333 while the agricultural labour daily wage for men as of FY 2022-23 was Rs 764.3 – a Rs 431 difference, Businessline figures said.
Opposition figure and Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi criticised the revised MGNREGA wages and claimed that a government formed by the INDIA bloc would “increase the wages of every labourer to Rs 400 per day on its first day [in power]”.
“Congratulations to [MGNREGA] workers! The Prime Minister has increased your salary by Rs 7. Now he might ask you, ‘What will you do with such a huge amount of money?’,” Gandhi said on X (formerly Twitter).
Trinamool Congress spokesperson Saket Gokhale said it was “shameful and shocking” that the wages for West Bengal – whose Trinamool government is in a standoff with the BJP-led Union government over allegations of graft in the state government’s implementing the Act – were hiked by “only 5%”.
The Union government reportedly sought permission from the Election Commission before releasing the revised wages, given that the regulatory model code of conduct will be in force until general election results are announced in early June.
Former IAS officer E.A.S. Sarma, however, wrote to the Election Commission saying it was necessary to limit the government’s publicisation of the revised wages given the model code’s being in force.
“When a similar clearance was given on 28-3-2019 when the MCC was in force, the Commission stipulated that (i) no publicity be given by the government through the media. (ii) no political functionaries shall refer to it, (iii) restrictions apply to both the Centre and the States,” Sarma noted in his letter to the commission.
