MUMBAI: India’s parliament on Friday passed a “historic” law to guarantee a minimum wage to hundreds of millions of workers, but labor activists said it did not go far enough to protect those in the informal sector.
The Code on Wages aims to set standard wages across India, where almost 90 percent of the labor force works in the informal sector with no security, low pay and little or no benefits.
Labour minister Santosh Gangwar said the “historic” bill would for the first time ensure about 500 million Indian workers received minimum pay. Previously, one in three casual workers on daily wages had been excluded, according to official data.
“This will be the first time that all workers who earn daily wages and employed across all sectors will have the right to a minimum wage,” a labor ministry official told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, speaking on condition of anonymity.
India’s minimum wage is 176 Indian rupees ($3) for an eight-hour work day, but local authorities can set their own lower rate and at least six states do so.
India’s upper house passed the Code on Wages Bill, the first of four labor bills designed to replace 44 archaic laws, on Friday evening within three days of it being voted through the lower house.
Speaking in parliament, opposition lawmakers said the bill lacked teeth and failed to guarantee “fair wages” to workers.
“After so many years, our government is still talking about minimum wages and not fair wage. We have missed the opportunity to improve lives of millions of people living in sub-human conditions,” said parliamentarian Madhusudan Mistry.
Labour activists said many workers would remain vulnerable to exploitation, particularly those hired through contractors, which is often the case for brick kilns and tea plantations.
Opposition politicians criticized a provision allowing employers to make deductions for staff benefits such as housing, food and travel payments, a practice that has for decades driven workers into debt bondage.
“India is legitimising modern-day slavery. The struggle for bonded labor just got more difficult,” said Chandan Kumar, coordinator of labor rights organization Working People’s Charter.
India passes ‘historic’ minimum wage law amid activist worries
India passes ‘historic’ minimum wage law amid activist worries
- Labour minister Santosh Gangwar said “historic” bill would ensure 500 million Indian workers received minimum pay
- India’s upper house passed the Code on Wages Bill
Russia says foreign forces in Ukraine would be ‘legitimate targets’
- Moscow has repeatedly said it will not tolerate the presence in Ukraine of troops from Western countries
MOSCOW: Russia would regard the deployment of any foreign military forces or infrastructure in Ukraine as foreign intervention and treat those forces as legitimate targets, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday, citing Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The ministry’s comment, one of many it said were in response to questions put to Lavrov, also praised US President Donald Trump’s efforts at working for a resolution of the war and said he understood the fundamental reasons behind the conflict.
“The deployment of military units, facilities, warehouses, and other infrastructure of Western countries in Ukraine is unacceptable to us and will be regarded as foreign intervention posing a direct threat to Russia’s security,” the ministry said on its website.
It said Western countries — which have discussed a possible deployment to Ukraine to help secure any peace deal — had to understand “that all foreign military contingents, including German ones, if deployed in Ukraine, will become legitimate targets for the Russian Armed Forces.”
The United States has spearheaded efforts to hold talks aimed at ending the conflict in Ukraine and a second three-sided meeting with Russian and Ukrainian representatives is to take place this week in the United Arab Emirates.
The issue of ceding internationally recognized Ukrainian territory to Russia remains a major stumbling block. Kyiv rejects Russian calls for it to give up all of its Donbas region, including territory Moscow’s forces have not captured.
Moscow has repeatedly said it will not tolerate the presence in Ukraine of troops from Western countries.
The ministry said Moscow valued the “purposeful efforts” of the Trump administration in working toward a resolution and understanding Russia’s long-running concerns about NATO’s eastward expansion and its overtures to Ukraine.
It described Trump as “one of the few Western politicians who not only immediately refused to advance meaningless and destructive preconditions for starting a substantive dialogue with Moscow on the Ukrainian crisis, but also publicly spoke about its root causes.”
