The rural wage crisis: Low food prices, MGNREGS ineffectiveness to blame

There has been considerable concern that rural India is going through a prolonged period of distress. One important marker of this income stress in village areas is the rural wage rate. By January this year, growth in average rural wages had fallen to just over 3 per cent, the lowest since 2014. In fact, rural wages have largely been stagnant, with very little growth since mid-2014, when the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance took office in New Delhi. The difference between the period since 2014 and that between 2007 and 2013 in rural wage growth data is stark. In the