Regional and Gender Disparities in Agricultural Wages

This study on agricultural wages shows that states like West Bengal and Gujarat have performed well in providing gender equal wages to men and women. Kerala’s performance in maintaining gender equal wages has been poor in recent years. West Bengal has performed quite well in between 1980-81 to 1996-97 in terms of growth rate in real wage rates. Kerala, Haryana and Punjab have shown consistently high level of real wage rates, but not growth rate in real wage rates. The need for raising the minimum wages in states like Orissa, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh is of paramount importance.