Sonia writes to PM on rural job plan wages

Congress president Sonia Gandhi has asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to "urgently" ensure that crores of workers in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Guarantee Programme (MGNREGA) get wages on a par with the minimum wages act.

Updated on: Nov 13, 2010, 02:04:42 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Congress president Sonia Gandhi has asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to "urgently" ensure that crores of workers in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Guarantee Programme (MGNREGA) get wages on a par with the minimum wages act.

If the government accepts Gandhi's recommendation, it could mean increase in wages of MGNREGA workers in 19 states, where only Rs 100 is being paid as per the directive of the rural development ministry. It would also mean an increase in the financial burden of the Centre, which is paying Rs 40,000 crore for implementing MGNREGA, a law drafted by the National Advisory Council headed by Gandhi.

In a note to the Prime Minister, Gandhi attached a legal opinion by additional solicitor general Indira Jaisingh which says that workers in the world's biggest job scheme are entitled to minimum wages and paying less is violation of law.

"It is, therefore, clear that minimum wages is the least wage at which a person can be employed by private or public sector," Jaisingh said in her opinion submitted to NAC, which has already asked the government to increase wages. Minimum wages in states vary from Rs 125 to Rs 200.

The rural development ministry headed by CP Joshi had repeatedly refused to increase wages, saying the issue was sub-judice.

On Wednesday, Andhra Pradesh chief minister K Rosaiah blew the lid saying that the matter was not under any court's consideration and if the government failed to notify minimum wages for MGNREGA workers, it would amount to contempt of court. Gandhi referred to Rosaiah's letter in her communication to the PM.

Highlighting its political importance, Gandhi said in a letter on Thursday: "Since the matter is of urgent and inter-ministerial nature you may have wished to have it examined and give suitable directions."

This is only the third time Gandhi has written to the Prime Minister on NAC issues. The other two instances were on the the food security law and ending manual scavenging.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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