The National Advisory Council headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi has suffered a setback, as Aruna Roy – one of its most prominent members – opted out of it, criticising Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for rejecting calls to pay the beneficiaries of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in line with the Minimum Wages Act.
“I do believe that it is extremely unfortunate the Prime Minister rejected the NAC recommendations on payment of minimum wages to MGNREGS workers,” Roy wrote to Gandhi, who accepted the eminent social activist’s request for not renewing her term as a member of the advisory panel after it ends on Friday. She also argued that the Government’s refusal to pay the minimum wages to the beneficiaries of the rural job scheme in fact punched holes in the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance’s boasts about its agenda for inclusive growth.
Roy was a member of the first NAC ever since the panel was constituted in June, 2004 – just about a month after the UPA came to power. With Gandhi as the chairperson of the NAC, Roy and a few other development activists gave shape to the UPA Government’s agenda for social sector, including framing the landmark Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).
Though the first NAC was dissolved with Gandhi’s resignation as its chairperson in the wake of the Office-of-Profit controversy in 2006, Roy returned as a member of the panel when it was reconstituted in 2010. The NAC – the Government’s interface with civil society – had in 2010 recommended that the beneficiaries of the rural job scheme should be paid the minimum wages as notified under the Minimum Wages Act 1948. Gandhi, herself, wrote to Prime Minister conveying him the NAC recommendations. Singh, however, did not act on the NAC recommendation, ostensibly due to strong opposition from within the Government – mainly from the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Agriculture.
In her letter to Gandhi on May 11 last, Roy also criticized the Government’s move to appeal in the Supreme Court, challenging the Karnataka High Court’s September 23, 2011 order for paying the MGNREGS beneficiaries in accordance with the Minimum Wage Act. “Even more distressing is the Government’s refusal to pay minimum wages even after the Supreme Court refused to stay the Karnataka High Court judgment.
It is difficult to understand how a country like India can deny the payment of minimum wages and still makes claims of inclusive growth,” she wrote, vowing to carry on the campaign outside the NAC.The Supreme Court had on January 23, 2012 refused to stay the order of the Karnataka High Court and instead asked the Government should harmonise the MGNREGS payments in line with the Minimum Wages Act in such a manner that the minimum wages of the states be respected.