Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Is our government for, of and by the people?' that was published in Newsband

Is our government for, of and by the people?

Manmohan Singh government refused to pay statutory minimum wages to workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Now MCNREG is the largest rights-based safety net programme anywhere in the world. The government declined to pay minimum wages to MGNREGA workers, arguing that the scheme was designed more as social security for the desperately poor than as regular employment requiring payment of floor-level wages.

MGNREGA was supposed to be not just life-giving, but it was to generate employment, halt distress migration and bonded labour and raise wage levels in the private sector where exploitation of workers is rampant.

Had it not been merely for the sake of playing to the gallery, the central government would have had a more liberal and soft stance on such a sensitive issue. That what has been virtually a blatant disgrace is the fact that even after rechristening the scheme "NREGA" as "MGNREGA", the scheme is being increasingly made to go back on the solemn promise once made to thousands of our people luring them to believe that their days of abject poverty are finally going to fade away. It will be absolutely a wrong step on the part of the government if it denies the payment of minimum wages to the poor wage earner.

India's poor population looks forward to schemes made by the government. The schemes facilitated have led to a substantial decline in poverty. It has immensely helped the poor strata of the society by creating employment opportunities and by providing with unemployment allowances. So, now also is it not the duty of the government to help the poor? The government is snatching away a basic fundamental right. The government is violating the Constitution. If this is the condition, then a paradoxical query arises: Is the government really "for the people, of the people and by the people"?

It is imperative that minimum wages are paid to these workers. They are not being paid any unemployment dole to say that minimum wages are not applicable to them. The government should focus on plugging such leakages and should not resort to the easy way out of denying the workers their legitimate dues.

The government has a scheme for the benefit of farmers under which it pays a higher minimum support price - for procuring farm produce - than the price ruling in the market. But when it comes to the landless unemployed labourers, the same government pays for their labour under MGNREGA at a rate much lower than the minimum wage fixed as per the Minimum Wages Act 1948. The government’s stand is illogical as well as illegal.