Minimum is not fair: Letter to BS on social security for the unorganised

In his column “Social security for the unorganised” (January 18) Santosh Mehrotra makes a good case for extending social insurance benefits to the informal labour in the country who at 450-plus million constitute 93 per cent of our workforce but have no powerful backing from the government or the plethora of trade unions across the country. 

There is an equally robust case for reviewing their wages, now confined to minimum wages, which is “wage barely sufficient for sustenance of life and providing for some measure of education, medical requirements and amenities”. In actual practice, it keeps the wage earner always at the throes of poverty. With generally a large family to support, wages are not adequate to protect the family from malnutrition or ensure education and health care. It is time the government made laws for employers to pay a fair wage which includes a rate sufficiently high to enable the worker to provide his family with food, shelter, clothing, medical care and education of children appropriate to his status in life. 

This would not be a standard rate but vary according to the capacity to pay and the efficiency of the worker. When workers in the organised sector are vying for and getting still higher living wage, the large majority of the unorganised workforce should not be languishing at minimum wage.

Y G Chouksey  Pune
 

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