For Enhancing Worker Lives Here is India’s Strategy to Replace Minimum Wage with Living Wage
India is making a big change to improve how much money people earn for their work right here in the country. The living wage is the smallest amount of money allowed by law, referred to as minimum wage. Thus, this living wage protects the workers and their families, and therefore, it is all about making sure workers get enough amount of money to live a good life, and support from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) is driving this change.
But, what does this big move mean for the average worker in India, and for the country as a whole? To begin with, though, living wages refer to the minimum amount of money that workers need to secure basic life needs such as housing, food, medical care, schools, and clothing. This idea is about making sure people can live with respect and fairness, not just getting by. For the first time in this magnitude, a plan is coming from which about 500 million workers of the country shall benefit from it. Primarily, this shall be helpful to those whose daily waged earnings are related but are far even from being partly adequate to cover basic needs.
The government is asking for help from the ILO to make this idea work well. They will, therefore, work together to get better at figuring out what a living wage should be and keeping the progression appraised with how they help the economy. Living Wages is a tremendous step and can raise millions of people from the trap of poverty. It paves, rather, the fastest path for India to align itself with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
Now, India has taken a big leap in living wages beyond the minimum wage. This is very important in the context of fixing the long-time issue where wages are not rising, but pay differences across different states are increasing. Although it has been since 2017, not a single rule covering the whole nation was made. This really just made things easier to assure that everybody is getting paid fairly because even if each state has its own set of minimum wages, it has never unified to cover the entire nation up until 2017. The new plan of bringing in the living wage is all about fairness, to make sure that the person gets his/her due share wherever he/she is located in India.
On top of that, India’s economy is doing really well, with a recent growth of 8.4%. This clearly indicates that India is more than ready to handle this change to better wages. The growth is good news not only for the economy but also means an improved living standard for people. This will definitely be a step towards the actualization of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of decent work and economic growth for all.
