Our new Minimum Wage pricing policy

The concept of pricing products is an alien one for me and my partner, Soko though she will die before she will admit it. "We are Punjabis, business comes naturally to us", she fervently insists everytime I begin a conversation about how we should really consider outside help with pricing and selling. But believe me on behalf of both of us, we are truly bad.


But we make good art. And in the latest addition to products we paint are jute bags. In Mumbai recently, Soko and I went to the Chembur market and found a vendor selling these pretty jute bags of pure white. I fell in love with them instantly and I swear to God I do not joke when I say that they were screaming out to me to paint on them. It is true.

So I picked up one and began painting on it. Now finished, the bag has a couple of paintings from a Facebook group called "A Girl's Guide to Taking Over the World" that deals with women's rights. As as Dumbledore had said, "In my not-so-humble opinion", the bag looks absolutely fantastic!

Now again came forth the question of pricing it. Our staunch principle has always been to keep our products very affordable. We don't want to be as low-end as we possibly can. So during the days that we were discussing the pricing bit, one of the things that I kept stumbling upon- whether in the newspapers or in discussions among people that I have an unforgivable habit of listening into- was minimum wages.

The thing that I have observed about minimum wages is that people seem to think this established mark on money to be paid for a job is "good enough" for the worker. When that is not the case. Not at least to me. This is the MINIMUM amount and the money we pay to our skilled or unskilled and all other categories of workers must always be more than minimum if we can help it. Sadly, that is not the case.

Then there was obviously the recent controversy over the poverty line definition by the Planning Commission that is also obviously concerned with wages. Here, I saw a poster somebody had shared on Facebook that said politicians should be put on minimum wages so that they understand the issues they formulate policies on, better. And that did make sense. How many us really know about minimum wages? I know I don't. Not as much as I should know, at least. And the irony is that while we will haggle endlessly with our sabzi-wala or the rickshaw-puller for 5 rupees, we will not even dream of haggling at the fancy brand-stores that sell things with shamelessly-high profit margins.

So I decided we will work on minimum wages too. I check the Uttarakhand minimum wages chart (available here) and found "printing of cloth" as the nearest job to what I do. So the semi-skilled worker that I am will get Rs. 167 per day. Now I took two days to paint the bag but more intricate work may take 2.5 days, though never more than that.

Ergo, depending on the number of days taken to paint the bag, the labour charges for the work will be:

167X2= 334 or 167X2.5= 418

Add the price of the bag (about rupees 80) and you will get your final price of the bag. We will also include some information about Minimum Wages and other uncomfortable stuff in one panel of the bag, besides the things that you want on it.

Here's to living without money! :)