Guwahati: The Centre has notified the daily wage rates for unskilled manual workers under the newly introduced Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-GRAMG) scheme, fixing the minimum wage at Rs 300 per day for workers in most states.
According to the official notification published in the Gazette of India, the daily wage has been set at Rs 300 for several states and Union Territories, including Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha and Rajasthan.
A few states have been assigned higher wage rates. Haryana has the highest notified wage at Rs 409 per day, followed by Goa at Rs 406, Kerala at Rs 401, Karnataka at Rs 382, Himachal Pradesh at Rs 375 for scheduled areas and Rs 300 for non-scheduled areas, Punjab at Rs 360, Maharashtra at Rs 317, and Andhra Pradesh at Rs 312.
The notification has drawn criticism from the Opposition, which said the Rs 300 daily wage is inadequate in view of rising living costs and called for a higher national minimum wage.
The Opposition also referred to the 2019 recommendations of the Expert Committee headed by economist Dr Anoop Satpathy, which proposed a national minimum wage floor of Rs 375 per day, and noted that the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Development has repeatedly advocated higher wages for MGNREGA workers.
It further urged the Centre to revise the notified wage rates, arguing that they should better reflect inflation and the rising cost of living for workers.