In bulk of rural India, Rs.5,000 is highest wage

New Delhi, July 3: For nearly 75 percent of the 17.9 crore (nearly 180 million) households in rural India, the monthly income of the highest-earning member is less than Rs.5,000, ($83) even as close to 40 percent are landless and work as manual casual labourers for their daily bread, latest official data reveals. This is the finding of the Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011 for Rural India released Friday that also shows that nearly 25 percent of the rural households still do not own a phone despite India boasting a telecom subscriber base of around a billion. Also, among the the fortunate families that actually own land, the dependence on rains for their crops is rather high, with 25 percent having no access to irrigation, as pe the Census released by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. Only 8.29 percent of the rural households reported a member who was drawing more than Rs.10,000 per month, while for 17.18 percent others the monthly earning was between Rs.5,000 and Rs.10,000 per month. The latest Census covered all the 640 districts in the country in a paperless manner, using some 640,000 electronic handheld devices. The government on Friday released only the provisional sdata of the socio-economic Census for rural India.