METHODOLOGY FOR COMPILATION OF WAGE RATE DATA

INTRODUCTION

Rural labour in general and agricultural labour in particular constitutes the weakest segment of our population. About two-third of the total labour force live in rural areas. This segment of the society, unlike their counterparts in the organised sector of industries, does not enjoy the benefits of the labour enactments and the employer-employee relationships. Most of them are casual workers doing day to day work involving frequent changes of employers and there is no fixed pay either. As such information on the living and working condition of this segment of the labour force is very scanty. Rural Labour Enquiries conducted at regular intervals on a quinqennial basis are the only source of reliable information on socio-economic conditions of rural labour. Besides, the Consumer Price Index Numbers for Agricultural and Rural Labourers released every month by the Bureau provide data for the revision and fixation of minimum wages in agriculture.

The Technical Working Group on Rural Retail Prices set up by the NSSO in 1974 to revise/update the series of Consumer Price Index Numbers for Agricultural Labourers felt the need  for a  regular in-flow of wage data for rural workers for drawing up and implementation of wage policy. This data was also found useful in the calculation of State/National Income  as well as in the assessment of cost of cultivation of crops. In view of its vital importance, the Group suggested to collect the wage rate of large set of occupations from a suitable selected sample of villages in various states so that a fairly representative picture of wage situation is available for the entire country on a continuous basis. It was also felt that since prices and wages are related to each other it would be useful if the trend of these two characteristics were available on the basis of same coverage. In pursuance of these recommendations of the Group, the wage rate data on eleven agricultural and seven non-agricultural occupations entailing manual work are being collected along with rural retail prices as a part of the scheme of Rural Labour Enquiry, from 600 sample villages spread over 20 states in the country since July, 1986 with the following objectives:

i) meeting the requirements of complementary data for enforcement of minimum wages fixed/revised by the Government;

ii) meeting the requirements of drawing up and implementation of Wage Policy; and

iii) meeting the requirements in estimation of State Domestic Product/National Income  and Cost of Cultivation studies.

However, the compilation of wage rate data was deferred for some time due to some problems relating to the veracity of data with reference to the purpose for which it was being collected. During the year 1995, the Governing Council of the National Sample Survey Organisation sorted out the problem and recommended that wage rate data should continue to be collected and published every month. In pursuance of the recommendation of the Council, the Labour Bureau took up the work of compiling wage rate data since the agricultural year 1995-96. These data are now being compiled on regular monthly basis and published in our monthly publication, the Indian Labour Journal, w.e.f. April, 1998.

SAMPLE SIZE

As stated earlier, the rural retail prices and wage rates are collected from the same set of sample villages. Therefore, the state-wise sample villages were decided by the Working Group as per the need for constructing the CPI No’s for Agricultural/ Rural Labourers. The state-wise distribution of the number of regions, strata and sample villages is given below:

COLLECTION OF WAGE RATE

The work of data collection has been entrusted to the Field Operations Division of the National Sample Survey Organisation. The wage rate data are being collected every month along with rural retail prices from 600 sample villages spread over 66 NSS regions of 20 States by convassing Block-5 (Annexure-I) of Schedule 3.01(R). Collection of data from these sample villages is staggered over the four weeks of a month with one-fourth of them being covered every week. The days of convassing of Schedule 3.01(R) are fixed. The village functionaries like the Panchayat Secretary, Progress Assistant, Patwari and other Village or Block Officials are the primary informants for collection of data on wage rates.  The data on normal working hours and the prevailing wage rates in cash and kind for the reported working hours are collected sex-wise for each of the 18 selected occupations. Payments in kind is very common in rural areas, which include food grains, cooked meal, fuel, tea, cigarettes, bidi, todder, etc. Wages in kind are evaluated at local retail prices.

The selected occupations for which daily wage rates are being collected every month are as follows:

Agricultural Occupations                   Non-agricultural Occupations          

1 Ploughing                                      1. Carpenter

2 Sowing                                         2. Blacksmith

3 Weeding                                       3. Cobbler

4.Transplanting                                 4. Mason

5.Harvesting                                     5. Tractor Driver

6.Winnowing                                    6.  Sweeper

7.Threshing                                      7. Unskilled Labour (un-specified)

8. Picking                                                    

9 Herdsman

   10.Well Digging

   11.Cane Crushing

 COMPILATION OF AVERAGE WAGE RATES

 The data received from the field is first posted separately for agricultural and non- agricultural occupations for each state every month.  Wage rates are sometimes reported for a duration that is less/more than the normal working hours. In such cases, they are first normalised for eight hours working day. Thereafter, data is thoroughly scrutinised and discrepant points are referred  back to the field for clarification. In the next stage, the simple arithmetic average of these normalised daily wage rates is worked out for each state as follows:

Where ‘W ‘ represents wage and ‘n’ number of villages in the State.

Similarly, the average wage rates at all-India level are derived by dividing the sum total of wages of all the 20 States by the number of quotations. State-wise averages have been restricted only to those occupations where the number of quotations are five or more in order to avoid inconsistency in wages paid to different categories of workers on account of difference in number of quotations. However, for working out all-India averages all those neglected quotations have been taken into account to arrive at total number of quotations at all-India level. At all-India level also, the number of quotations for working out occupation-wise averages have been restricted to five or more.

The present publication provides wage rate data in respect of 18 agricultural and non-agricultural occupations for 20 states and all-India for the agricultural year 2002-03. The dash (-) in Tables against various occupations indicate that no wage rate was reported during the reference month for various reasons, such as:

i)                    the activity  connected with the occupation was not undertaken in the  State; or

ii)                   the activity was out of season in the State; or

iii)                 the particular category of workers (i.e. Men/Women/Children) were not engaged in that operation. 

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