Retail inflation for farm, rural workers rises to 5.59%, 5.94% in February
Retail inflation for farm, rural workers rises to 5.59%, 5.94% in February
Subject: Economy
Section: Inflation and Unemployment
Context:
Retail inflation for farm workers and rural labourers rose to 5.59 per cent and 5.94 per cent respectively in February, mainly due to higher prices of certain food items.
Concept:
- Labour Bureau has been compiling CPI Numbers for Agricultural Labourers since September, 1964.The base of CPI(AL) was 1960-61=100.
- This series of CPI Numbers was then replaced by CPI for (i) Agricultural and (ii) Rural Labourers with base 1986-87=100 from November, 1995 onwards.
- CPI for Agricultural and Rural labourers on base 1986-87=100 is a weighted average of 20 constituent state indices and it measures the extent of change in the retail prices of goods and services consumed by the agricultural and rural labourers as compared with the base period viz 86-87. This index is released on the 20th of the succeeding month.
- CPI-AL is basically used for revising minimum wages for agricultural labour in different States.
How the CPI-AL compares with CPI-RL?
While the retail prices utilized in the compilation of CPI-AL and CPI-RL are same, the weights are different due to the difference in coverage of the two series. The coverage of CPI-AL is confined to households of the agricultural labourers whereas the CPI-RL is CPI-AL covers the households of rural labourers which include agricultural labourers households also.
How the Rural Labour Households and Agricultural Labour Householdsare have been defined?
i) Rural Labour Households
Rural Labour Households are those households whose income, during the last 365 days, was more from wage paid manual labour (agricultural and/or non-agricultural) than either from paid non-manual employment or from self- employment.
ii) Agricultural Labour households
The rural labour households, who derive 50 per cent or more of their total income from wage paid manual labour in agricultural activities, are treated as agricultural labour households.
For how many states indices for CPI-AL/RL are compiled and how were they selected?
Indices for CPI-AL/RL are compiled separately for each of the 20 States which were selected on the basis of the proportion of agriculture labour/rural labour in respective states.
How all-India index is compiled?
The all-India index is worked out as a weighted average of the indices of 20 States, weights being the estimated consumption expenditure of all rural and agricultural labour households in each State as a proportion of corresponding expenditure for all-India.
What are the weights assigned to each state?
Wage Rates in Rural India
When was the collection and compilation of wage rates started?
The wage rate data are collected since 1986-87, their compilation and publication however were started from April, 1998 on regular basis.
What wage rates are collected by the Labour Bureau and how the average wage rates are worked out?
The wage rates collected by the Bureau are the prevailing wage rates in different villages of the respective states and are averaged to arrive at State and All-India level average wage rate. To arrive at the State level average wage rates, the daily wage rate data received from the different villages are first normalized for eight hours working day and then the simple arithmetic average of these normalized daily wage rates is worked out. State-wise averages are however restricted to those occupations where the number of quotations are five or more in order to avoid inconsistency in wages paid to different categories of workers on account of difference in number of quotations.
The average wage rates at all-India level are derived by dividing the sum total of wages of all the 20 states by the number of quotations. At all-India level also, the number of quotations for working out occupation-wise averages are restricted to five or more.
What are the occupations for which wage rates are compiled?
The average daily wage rate data was collected for 11 agricultural and 7 non-agricultural occupations till October, 2013. However, following the recommendations of the Working Group constituted by the CSO on advice of the National Statistical Commission, wage rate is now being collected for 25 occupations(12 agricultural and 13 non-agricultural) as given below:
What are the reports being compiled and published by the Labour Bureau based on Rural Labour Enquiry?
The following five analytical reports are compiled and published by the Labour Bureau on quinquennial basis:
- Employment and Unemployment of the Rural Labour Households;
- Wages and Earnings of the Rural Labour Households;
- Indebtedness among the Rural Labour Households;
- General Characteristics of the Rural Labour Households; and
- Consumption Expenditure of the Rural Labour Households.