What is the issue?
- Currently, the 7th Pay Commission Recommendations are being implemented.
- So the time is ripe for bettering the wages of those in the unorganised sector.
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
