The North Indian state of Haryana has emerged as the state with the highest daily wage under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme at Rs 277.
Bihar and Jharkhand came at the bottom with daily wages of Rs 168.
The second highest wages was in Chandigarh, followed by Kerala at 265 and Nicobar region at 249 per day.
Goa came fifth with Rs 240 per day.
Among the low wage states were Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh at 172, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh at Rs 175.
National Rural Employment Guarantee Act was passed in 2005 and was later renamed after Mahatma Gandhi.
It aims to fight poverty by guaranteeing 100 days of manual labor to at least one member of each household.
Workers typically create common infrastructure such as canals, bunds etc or engage in activities such as cleaning of roads and so on.
The scheme also provides for working on private property as well.
The act was first proposed in 1991 by Narasimha Rao.
In 2006, it was finally accepted in the parliament and commenced implementation in 200 districts of India.
Based on this pilot experience, NREGA was scoped up to covered all the districts of India from 1 April 2008.
Over Rs 50,000 cr is spent on the scheme every year.
With tens of millions of workers, it is considered the ‘largest public works programme in the world’ by number of participants.
The wages are set every year by the central government based on the state- wise Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers compiled by the ministry of commerce.
| State | Wage | State | Wage |
| Haryana | 277 | Mizoram | 194 |
| Chandigarh | 265 | Gujarat | 192 |
| Kerala | 258 | Rajasthan | 192 |
| Nicobar | 249 | Assam | 183 |
| Goa | 240 | Bengal | 180 |
| Lakshadweep | 237 | Himachal (NS) | 179 |
| Karnataka | 236 | JK | 179 |
| Andaman | 236 | Arunachal | 177 |
| Punjab | 233 | Nagaland | 177 |
| Himachal (sch) | 224 | Sikkim | 177 |
| Haveli | 218 | Tripura | 177 |
| Tamil | 205 | Odisha | 176 |
| Puducherry | 205 | Meghalaya | 175 |
| Manipur | 204 | Uttar | 175 |
| Maharashtra | 201 | Uttarakhand | 175 |
| Andhra | 197 | MP-C’garh | 172 |
| Telangana | 197 | Bihar | 168 |
| Daman Diu | 195 | Jharkhand | 168 |