India

Abstract

India has a long tradition of having a statutory framework for minimum wages (MW) designed to cover its large, working population distributed between the formal and informal sectors. The Minimum Wages Act 1948 enacted soon after India gained independence on August 15, 1947, which meant that the country was the first among the developing countries to introduce a statutory MW. Both internal (rising industrialization, labour unrest and strikes) and external forces (International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions and political developments) contributed to the enactment of this legislation (John 1997; Rani and Belser 2012). Even today this MW legislation is considered as a landmark law, though it is extremely complex from an administration perspective. It is through this piece of legislation (and for many years the only major one) that workers in the informal or unorganized sectors and agricultural occupations have received protection against low wages. Given the complexities of the Indian labour market, the legislation has been an achievement. MW rates have been declared for more than 1,500 occupational categories, for the centre and 30 states/7 union territories (UTs, administered by the central government), bifurcated further by geography and skill levels (Varkkey and Korde 2012).