A senior official in the state Labour and Employment department said on Friday that the government had previously done upward revision of the minimum wages for agricultural labourers in 2002. The rates had been raised from Rs 36 to Rs 50 then. A notification for the latest upward revision of minimum wages was issued on Thursday.

The official said that since the rates were revised under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, the upward revision would also be applicable to those getting employment under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).

Last year, Rs 86 crore had been utilised under this scheme; this year, it is likely to go up further with the upward revision of the minimum wages, the official said.

The highest rates of minimum wages (Rs 108) for farm labourers are being paid in Karnataka, followed by Rajasthan, Himachal Prardesh and Gujarat (each paying Rs 100), Madhya Pradesh (Rs 85) and Maharashtra (ranging from Rs 66 to Rs 72, zone-wise).

The official said the government had raised the minimum wages after consulting with the Minimum Wages Advisory Board. "The department will soon launch a state-wide programme to educate the agricultural labourers on the upward revision of their minimum wages through advertisements in print and electronic media and ensure effective implementation of the decision," he added.

A prominent tribal leader and senior Congress MP, Madhusudan Mistry, hailed the move and urged the government to implement it effectively.

He, however, expressed his concern over the growing number of farm labourers in the state.

Apart from the increasing human population, the other primary reason for the growing number of farm labourers in the last three decades or so is the "land alienation," where small and marginal farmers are forced to sell their land due to lack of irrigation and other agriculture-related facilities. This class of farmers are thus being increasingly reduced to landless labourers. The number of agriculture labourers that stood at a little over 18.87 lakhs in Gujarat in 1971 has shot up to a staggering 51.61 lakhs as per the census conducted in 2001.

Mistry further said that seven years after the 2001 census, the population of farm labourers in Gujarat has swelled to over 60 lakhs, adding that it is high time that the government checked this trend by initiating some concrete measures .

The measures could include allotting the waste land to landless farm labourers and extending irrigation and other facilities to small/marginal ryots.