Rural workers in MP, Gujarat get the lowest daily wages: RBI data

Rural agricultural workers in Madhya Pradesh (MP), which had gone for Assembly polls on Friday, get the lowest daily wages in the country, much below the national average.

According to data compiled by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), in MP, male agricultural workers in rural areas got a daily wage of just Rs 229.2 while in Gujarat, which claims to be a model state, it worked out to Rs 241.9 in the year ended March 2023. The national average for the year was Rs 345.7.

If a rural farm worker gets work for 25 days in a month in MP, his monthly earning will be around Rs 5,730 per month which may not be sufficient to meet the household expenses of a family of four or five.

However, a rural farm worker in Kerala, which pays the highest wage of Rs 764.3 per person among states, gets an average of Rs 19,107 for 25 days of work in a month.

In the case of Gujarat, the monthly wage for a farm worker would have been around Rs 6,047.

As per a calculation by rating firm Crisil, the cost of a vegetarian thali was Rs 27.9 and non-vegetarian thali Rs 61.4 as of September this year.

This means a family of five will have to shell out Rs 140 for a veg thali meal or Rs 8,400 per month.

While the financial year 2021-22 was bad for the rural economy with the Covid pandemic hitting the jobs and income levels, high inflation and interest rates played havoc in the fiscal 2022-23, hitting the rural demand.

Among other poorly paid states, in Uttar Pradesh, rural farm workers got an average daily wage of Rs 309.3 and Odisha Rs 285.1 in 2021-22. 

Male farm workers in Maharashtra, which boasts of being most industrialised state, got Rs 303.5 daily.