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On an average, a male agriculture worker in rural India earned ₹345.7 per day in FY23, the financial year that ended on March 31, 2023. This is according to the RBI’s Handbook of Statistics on Indian States, released earlier this month.
Kerala paid the highest wage to agriculture labourers, ₹764.3 a day, more than double the national average. Data shows that this has been the case every year, since FY15.
On the other hand, a labourer who did the same amount of work made a mere ₹229.2 per day in Madhya Pradesh, the lowest wage in the country.
In the last nine financial years, Madhya Pradesh paid the lowest daily wage to agriculture workers in seven financial years, barring FY21 and FY18. In these two financial years, Gujarat paid the lowest agri wage in the country, pushing Madhya Pradesh to the second position in the list of States that paid the lowest wages. In FY23, Gujarat paid the second lowest agri-daily wage in the country — ₹241.9 per day. This is 30 per cent less than the national average.
The wage gap
The State that paid the highest agri wage to a male worker in the rural area, after Kerala, was Himachal Pradesh. There, the daily wage was ₹473.3. This is again ₹291 less than how much a worker makes in Kerala every day. The difference between the wages in Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu (third in the list) is however, a mere ₹3 per day. The other States that paid comparatively higher agri wages are Punjab and Haryana — ₹424.8 and ₹393.3 per day.
While the agri wage for women across states for FY23 is yet to be released, historically, women earned less than men. In FY21, a woman agriculture field labourer made ₹88 per day less than her male counterpart in India, according to the Ministry of Agriculture’s data.
Wage hike
Among all the large States in the country, Maharashtra saw the highest hike in agriculture wages between the pre- and post-pandemic times.
Between FY20 and FY23, agri wages for men in rural Maharashtra grew from ₹231.8 to ₹303.5, a 31 per cent increase. However, Maharashtra still falls among the bottom five States that paid the lowest wage to agricultural labourers.
Karnataka saw a 30 per cent increase, from ₹292 to ₹379.5, while in Andhra Pradesh, there was a 27.03 per cent hike from ₹302.6 to ₹384.4. On the other hand, despite being the highest payer over the years, agri wages in Kerala increased just 9 per cent between FY20 and FY23.
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