Another calendar year 2025 has ended, new year 2026 with new hopes has arrived. But for thousands of daily wagers in Jammu and Kashmir, time seems frozen in the 1990’s when they were hired in various departments with a promise of regularization. Since then, several governments havechanged, new government’s formed, each government promised regularisation, but forgot the promises made. In reality, the lives of daily wagers remained locked in the same cycle of uncertainty, delay, and neglect. Every year changes on paper but their status does not.
For almost three decades, daily wagers have formed the invisible backbone of public infrastructure in J&K. Most of the departments, health, education, higher education, forest, power, water, and many others function because of the daily wagers, contractuals, need-based appointees etc. Yet, despite their long services on wages equal to pea nuts, many of them still live without job security, fixed salaries, pensions, or social protection. Each year brings renewed promises of regularization, and each year ends with the same unanswered wait.
What makes this stagnation particularly painful is not just the absence of policy action, but the repetition of hope. In election seasons and budget speeches, daily wagers are remembered. Committees are announced, files are said to be “under consideration,” and assurances are made that a “final decision” is imminent. But once the spotlight fades, so does urgency. Years pass, these daily wagers age, and some retire, or die, without ever seeing their labour formally recognized.
Inflation over the years has made this neglect harsher. Wages that were barely sufficient a decade ago are now grossly inadequate. Many daily wagers struggle to pay school fees, medical bills, or winter heating costs. Delayed payments are common, forcing families into debt. Ironically, those maintaining public assets often live in the most fragile conditions themselves, excluded from the very welfare systems they help sustain.
“Another year ended, daily wagers remained daily wagers. Omar Abdullah before becoming chief minister said during a public rally in Ganderbal that he feels sad about PhD holders working in colleges on meagre salaries. Now his own government on the floor of house to a question raised by M. Y. Tarigami, has refused to enhance their salary, forget about regularization.”
The moral contradiction is stark. The state speaks of dignity of labour, yet keeps a large segment of its workforce in perpetual insecurity. It celebrates development, yet relies on underpaid, unprotected workers to deliver it. Regularization is often portrayed as a financial burden, but the human cost of non-regularization, stress, poverty, broken families, and lost futures, is rarely accounted for in official calculations.
Equally troubling is the legal and administrative limbo. Different categories of daily wagers, casual labourers, and need-based workers exist across departments, each governed by fragmented rules and arbitrary cut-off dates. This complexity is frequently used as an excuse for inaction. But complexity, when allowed to persist for decades, becomes a form of institutional indifference rather than a genuine constraint.
For Jammu and Kashmir, this issue is not merely about employment policy; it is about trust. When promises of regularization are made year after year and never fulfilled, governance loses credibility. Workers no longer ask when regularization will happen; they ask whether the state intends to do it at all.
Another year has changed. Speeches have been delivered, files have moved, or claimed to have moved. But daily wagers remained daily wagers. The question now is no longer rhetorical. It is urgent and unavoidable, how many more years must change before the state changes its stance and shows its will? Until that happens, the turning of the calendar will remain a ritual for those whose lives are still waiting to begin.
(The author is a teacher and a researcher based in Gowhar Pora Chadoora of Central Kashmir’s Budgam district. The views, opinions and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the author and aren’t necessarily in accord with the views of “Kashmir Horizon”)
